Urban Science doi: 10.3390/urbansci10080472

Authors: Daniel D. Otero Meza Alexis Sagastume Gutiérrez Juan J. Cabello Eras

Whether economic growth decouples from municipal solid waste (MSW) generation in upper–middle-income economies remains contested. We test the Waste Kuznets Curve and a disposal-to-recovery substitution effect using a 13-year panel of 1101 Colombian municipalities, combining step-wise fixed-effects models with a non-parametric generalized additive model (GAM), a family of spatial specifications, and a selection-aware recovery model. We find no evidence of income-driven decoupling in landfilling. Once the urban density and demographic structure are controlled, the income terms lose significance, the non-parametric estimate is predominantly monotonic, and density emerges as the main structural driver. Material recovery grows faster than disposal with income (relative substitution), but this signal is concentrated where recovery is measured—only 27% of municipalities report it, and coverage falls from every metropolitan municipality to one in five in the rural periphery, and the income terms are stable across every spatial representation—so that once selection is corrected the recovery elasticity falls from about 5.9 to a non-significant 1.3. Rather than spontaneous decoupling, Colombia exhibits persistent coupling alongside an institutionally engineered, spatially unequal recovery capacity. Achieving SDG 12 therefore requires stratified policies that mandate consumption reduction in mature urban economies while subsidizing shared circular infrastructure for historically neglected rural jurisdictions.

Urban Science doi: 10.3390/urbansci10080471

Authors: Hao Geng Fang Liu Zhitao Zhong Yusong Zhu Jingyi Zhang

The worsening jobs–housing imbalance in high-density urban areas has become increasingly prominent. However, existing studies predominantly focus on the city and regional scales, with limited attention to small-scale spatial units, failing to provide empirical evidence for refined regulation of transport and land use. As a typical compact development mode at the small scale, Transit-Oriented Development (TOD) offers an ideal spatial unit for examining micro-level jobs–housing relationships. However, its influence on jobs–housing balance remains unclear. This study takes 72 built subway station areas in Shenzhen’s highest-density built-up area as the research object. Employing quadratic polynomial regression and XGBoost-SHAP methods, it reveals the effects of transportation supply and land use on the employment–residential ratio, as well as threshold effects and indicator synergies. The main findings are as follows: (1) Transportation supply (Node), land use (Place), and TOD degree (TODness) all exhibit U-shaped effects on the employment–residential ratio, with inflection points at Node = 0.330, Place = 0.412, and TODness = 0.776, identifying the critical transition from balance to employment polarization. (2) Number of subway directions is the most critical indicator, together with betweenness centrality, floor area ratio, population size, and land use entropy, each exhibiting notable threshold effects. (3) A significant interaction effect exists between betweenness centrality and land use entropy, suggesting that traffic network connectivity and land use evenness can jointly regulate the employment–residential ratio in both directions. This study provides a quantitative basis for phased regulation of jobs–housing relationships in high-density TOD station areas, with findings transferable to other high-density cities.

Urban Science doi: 10.3390/urbansci10080470

Authors: Ivana Marjanović Sandra Milanović Zbiljić Milan Marković

European urban policy increasingly requires city benchmarks that are people-centred, multidimensional and methodologically defensible, yet perception-based environmental evidence is rarely aggregated without arbitrary weighting. Accordingly, this paper develops and justifies a synthetic index of perceived urban environmental performance (UEP) for European cities. Specifically, using the environmental module of the 2023 Eurostat Urban Audit Perception Survey (UAPS) for 83 Functional Urban Areas (FUAs), four satisfaction indicators (air quality, noise, cleanliness and green spaces) are aggregated with a benefit-of-the-doubt (BoD) composite indicator that assigns each city endogenous, self-favouring weights. Standard, weight-restricted and cross-efficiency variants are estimated, benchmarked against an equal-weight comparator, and embedded in an exploratory spatial data analysis. The results demonstrate that nine cities form the efficient frontier, led by Oulu, Luxembourg and Zurich, while Skopje, Naples and Athens anchor the lower tail. Additionally, a robust North–South gradient emerges, and green space satisfaction is the dominant structural driver of composite scores, partially compensating weak air quality in many cities. The study addresses perception-based BoD benchmarking—uncovering dimension-specific environmental governance deficits masked by national indicators—and complements objective environmental monitoring for European Union (EU) cohesion and climate-neutrality policy.

Urban Science doi: 10.3390/urbansci10080469

Authors: Dimitrios Kalfas Stavros Kalogiannidis Fotios Chatzitheodoridis Athanasios Papavasileiou

Transportation infrastructure plays a fundamental role in shaping sustainable urban and regional development by improving accessibility, strengthening territorial cohesion, and supporting long-term economic resilience. While previous studies have primarily examined this relationship through macroeconomic indicators and secondary datasets, limited attention has been given to the perceptions of transportation professionals directly involved in infrastructure planning, implementation, and management. Addressing this gap, the present study investigates how transportation professionals in Greece perceive the contribution of transport infrastructure to sustainable regional development within the European policy context. A quantitative, cross-sectional design was employed, administering a structured questionnaire to 384 transportation professionals in October–November 2025. The study examined four interrelated dimensions: socio-economic contribution, environmental sustainability, infrastructure resilience, and long-term development. Multiple regression analysis showed that all four dimensions are significantly and positively associated with perceived regional development, with socio-economic contribution (β* = 0.359) and long-term development (β* = 0.304) showing the largest coefficients (R2 = 0.597, p < 0.001). The study contributes practitioner-grounded evidence from the Greek context, with implications for the European Green Deal, TEN-T, and EU Cohesion Policy.

Urban Science doi: 10.3390/urbansci10080468

Authors: Younsung Kim Colin Chadduck

Urban climate risks, particularly extreme heat and flooding, increasingly threaten public infrastructure in rapidly urbanizing regions. Public schools represent critical community assets, yet their spatial planning often overlooks the role of natural capital in mitigating environmental risks. This study examines the intersection of natural capital and urban design through a case study of public schools in the Mount Vernon District of Fairfax County, Virginia. Using cartographic modeling and spatial analysis, the study assesses school-site exposure to urban heat island effects and localized flood risks by integrating geospatial data on land cover, surface temperature, and hydrological conditions. Results indicate that all analyzed school sites exhibit notable vulnerability to both heat exposure and flooding. The findings highlight the importance of incorporating natural capital—such as expanded tree canopy, green infrastructure, and permeable surfaces—into school site planning to enhance climate resilience and environmental quality.

Urban Science doi: 10.3390/urbansci10080467

Authors: Troy Daniel Glover

Cities increasingly invest in social infrastructure—parks, plazas, libraries, and other shared environments—to foster connection and wellbeing. Yet proximity does not reliably translate into meaningful social interaction, thereby revealing a persistent gap in understanding how connection emerges in urban contexts. This paper advances a relational model of urban social wellbeing that shifts analytical focus from spatial provision to interactional process. Drawing on an integrative conceptual synthesis of urban studies, micro-sociology, and social psychology, the model specifies how environmental conditions shape patterns of engagement over time. Urban social life unfolds as a staged sequence of interactional dynamics that progress from co-presence and recognition through civil inattention, triangulation, acknowledgment, interaction, and repetition. Across these stages, perceived social risk operates as a probabilistic filter that shapes transition likelihoods and explains why interaction often stalls. The paper further introduces social fitness as a contextual and relational capacity that develops through repeated interaction. By distinguishing between relational capacity and relational outcomes, the model explains how social wellbeing emerges through relational layering, as individuals accumulate a portfolio of strong, weak, and invisible ties that support belonging and integration. Conceptualizing urban social life as a dynamic system, the model offers a framework for empirical investigation and positions urban design as the shaping of interactional conditions.

Urban Science doi: 10.3390/urbansci10080466

Authors: Luka Hamel-Serenity

Stresses of climate change, urbanization, and segregation make the City of Norfolk in Virginia’s Tidewater region a fitting context for qualitative research into coastal resilience, urban nature, and residents’ perceptions of the environment. Dissertation research into sea level rise and urban development provided a rich environment for developing a practical multi-method system for community-engaged investigations of flooding effects, gentrification, and the loss of urban nature. Multi-method research illuminates social, racial, and economic dynamics in Norfolk residents through participant observation, archival research, semi-structured interviews, and walking interviews. The data generated by archival content analysis and semi-structured interviews can offer insights into citizens’ roles and experiences regarding climate change, urban development and redevelopment, and distressed nature in the city. Innovative use of participant observation and the walking interview can engage with questions of respondents’ personal beliefs about nature and the city, highlighting new possible applications of these methods. This research adds to the literature on the effects of climate change and displacement in Norfolk’s planning policies. It supersedes discussions of the mechanics of climate change to assess a range of residents’ perceptions on their own terms. The article provides a clear framework for engaging with residents around issues on climate, urbanization, and environmental stress. It therefore offers a methodological contribution to the field of qualitative research in coastal climate change science and the human experience of the dynamic, modern city. The article’s findings and methods may not be applicable in rural areas or in areas which are not facing acute climate change.

Urban Science doi: 10.3390/urbansci10080465

Authors: Carmen Díaz-López Francisco Conejo-Arrabal Dariel López-López Konstantin Verichev

Although conventionally quantified as an urban–rural thermal anomaly, urban heat islands are systematic expressions of development choices that shape unequal exposures and health risks across cities. This article develops an integrated urban development-health framework explaining how imperviousness, vegetation deficit, landscape configuration, urban morphology, thermally absorptive materials and nocturnal heat retention connect heat exposure with physical disease, mental well-being and climate-responsive planning. A critical integrative review reported using PRISMA 2020 and PRISMA-ScR principles, organised evidence from urban climate, public health, environmental epidemiology and planning. The synthesis covers the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), Normalized Difference Built-up Index (NDBI), Local Climate Zones (LCZs), sky-view factor (SVF), height-to-width ratio (H/W), land-surface temperature (LST), Universal Thermal Climate Index (UTCI), Physiological Equivalent Temperature (PET), wet-bulb globe temperature (WBGT) and nocturnal minimum temperature, together with cardiovascular, respiratory, psychiatric, sleep, mortality and well-being outcomes. Six recurrent amplification pathways were identified: imperviousness and low canopy cover; nocturnal heat retention; social vulnerability; blue-green and cool infrastructure; heat–pollution–humidity interaction; and sleep/mental-health disruption. The Urban Heat-Health Development Index (UHHDI) and Urban Heat-Health Amplification Pattern (UHHAP) are proposed as transparent, review-derived tools for urban diagnosis and policy prioritisation. A Spanish/Mediterranean climatic-zone transition analysis illustrates how future climatic severity can be translated into planning-relevant exposure potential. The findings support a shift from simply describing urban heat to diagnosing development-driven heat-health risk, with implications for urban regeneration, thermal justice, public-health adaptation and healthy-city governance.

Urban Science doi: 10.3390/urbansci10080464

Authors: Hiroko Oe Yasuyuki Yamaoka Max Weeks Sitsada Sartamorn

This study examines how spatial design, particularly lightscape interventions, operates as a behavioral nudge associated with collaborative participation intention in urban environments. Drawing on nudge theory, place attachment, and cultural heritage literature, we analyze data from a questionnaire survey of 720 urban residents across major metropolitan regions in Japan using structural equation modeling (SEM). The results indicate that urban development and cultural heritage assets are positively associated with lightscape interventions, which in turn show a strong positive relationship with collaborative participation intention. While urban development exhibits both direct and indirect relationships with participation intention, the influence of cultural heritage assets operates primarily through lightscape interventions as a mediating mechanism. These findings suggest that cultural heritage alone does not automatically stimulate civic participation; rather, its social value is activated when heritage resources are translated into meaningful spatial and visual experiences. Lightscape interventions thus serve as an effective non-coercive mechanism linking spatial and cultural resources to civic engagement intentions. This research offers valuable insights for urban planners and policymakers seeking design-based, non-coercive strategies to enhance citizens’ place attachment and willingness to contribute to community activities.

Urban Science doi: 10.3390/urbansci10080463

Authors: María Belén Vázquez-Brage Raimundo Otero-Enríquez

This study addresses the need to establish precise variables to assess subjective urban vulnerability, moving beyond the strictly one-dimensional or perceptual–environmental measurements regularly applied in the study of this territorial reality. Following an initial theoretical proposal, a thematic content analysis of semi-structured interviews was conducted with stakeholders who carry out their professional activity in vulnerable neighborhoods. The diagnostic questionnaire was evaluated through a three-round Delphi process by a multidisciplinary panel of experts from the Spanish university system. The results definitively validated 32 indicators, distributed across three dimensions of subjective urban vulnerability: physical space of the neighborhood (16), social identity (8), and social cohesion (8). In conclusion, this framework provides researchers in the field of territorial science and public managers with a validated, precise instrument for designing interventions tailored to the psychosocial complexity of vulnerable neighborhoods, in the Spanish and European context, improving the understanding and management of these spaces.

Urban Science doi: 10.3390/urbansci10080462

Authors: Rodrigo Sant’Ana Nogueira Letícia Peret Antunes Hardt Patrícia Costa Pellizzaro Carlos Hardt

Criminality represents one of the major challenges faced by Brazilian cities, particularly due to the limited state capacity to control violence. To provide support for addressing this issue, the research focuses on systematizing responses to the investigative question regarding the identifiable foundations for sharing urbanistic-criminal solutions within the framework of the urban agenda. With the aim of analyzing this reality through a case study in Itumbiara, Goiás, Brazil, the assessment relied on field surveys and relational analysis of criminal, landscape, and institutional data. Considering three temporal intervals—before, parallel, and after the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic—to recognize its influence on the phenomenon under review, the results on the distribution of thefts and robberies along a road sample show a decline in crime even after the official end of the health crisis. Socio-behavioral and socio-political parameters scored lower than socio-morphological ones but overall were classified as medium-low quality. The formulated guidelines combine analytical variables and criminological theories to support public policies for integrated management of safe scenarios, reinforcing the hypothesis that such interactions enable principles for coordinated measures in planning and security in urbanized areas.

Urban Science doi: 10.3390/urbansci10080461

Authors: Anna Szijártó Máté Prohászka Rita Nemes

The construction of adequate infrastructure in low-resource regions is frequently constrained by limited technical facilities, inadequate supply chains, and the absence of standardized quality control. This study presents a case study of the reinforced concrete foundation system of a multifunctional sports hall constructed in Cacine, Guinea-Bissau, where concrete production was carried out under severe logistical and technological constraints. Following construction, laboratory investigations were performed to evaluate the transported cement sample, locally available aggregates, and concrete specimens collected on site. Cement characterization included particle-size distribution, thermal analysis, and compressive strength testing, while the concrete was assessed through compressive strength and water absorption measurements. The aggregate grading complied with the relevant technical requirements and fell within the recommended grading envelope; however, the cement exhibited lower mechanical performance than expected from its declared class, although the non-standard specimen geometry does not permit formal conformity assessment. The concrete reached an average 28-day compressive strength of 12.9 MPa and exhibited relatively high water absorption, reflecting the combined influence of volumetric batching, high water demand, limited mixing efficiency, and the absence of chemical admixtures. Scenario analyses based on the Bolomey relationship indicated that improved control of the effective water-to-cement ratio could substantially enhance concrete performance. Although the study is limited by retrospective testing and a small number of specimens, it provides practical insight into the adaptation of concrete technology to resource-constrained environments and identifies key technological priorities for future infrastructure projects in Guinea-Bissau and similar regions.

Urban Science doi: 10.3390/urbansci10080460

Authors: José-Miguel Giner-Pérez Alvaro de-Juanes-Rodríguez

Digital transformation is portrayed both as a lever of territorial convergence and as a driver of polarisation between urban cores and peripheries, yet its effect on regional economic resilience has rarely been measured systematically. This study transposes the Economic Resilience Index framework from the national to the regional scale, building a Regional Resilience Index (R-ERI) for 236 NUTS2 regions of the EU-27 from Eurostat indicators, anchored in the capacities of absorption, recovery, and adaptation and measuring resilience as a capacity rather than as a realised shock trajectory. Two complementary models are estimated: a spatial Durbin panel with two-way fixed effects (2018–2023), spanning the COVID-19 pandemic and 2022 energy shocks, and an exploratory cross-sectional difference model exploiting regional artificial intelligence (AI) adoption data disaggregated by NACE branch (2023–2025). The results show that resilience is strongly spatially autocorrelated (Moran’s I between 0.66 and 0.74; p = 0.001); that digital connectivity generates a positive indirect effect on neighbouring regions despite a negative own-region effect; and that the synergy hypothesis—that digitalisation yields more resilience when combined with traditional sectors—does not hold robustly, the interaction being null in the panel and only marginally positive in the AI layer (p = 0.10). We conclude that digital connectivity is not, on its own, an automatic convergence mechanism, and that cohesion policy should account for each region’s sectoral structure and peripheral position.

Urban Science doi: 10.3390/urbansci10080459

Authors: Shishir Mathur

This study provides evidence on the impact of a heavy rail-based suburban metro station in Fremont, California, on house prices using geographically weighted regression (GWR) and multiscale geographically weighted regression (MGWR). The dataset comprises sale price, sale date, and property and locational characteristics for single-family houses sold during the January 2000–April 2018 period within two miles of the Warm Springs Station on the San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit system. The results demonstrate that, relative to the referent period (2000–2001): (a) the station-led house price impacts are spatially heterogeneous—the house price increased in one pocket only, comprising less than one-tenth of the dataset, not across the entire 0–2 mile station area, (b) the price increase in that pocket began right after the project announcement period, and (c) the price impacts indicated by the MGWR model markedly differ from baseline ordinary least square regression (OLS) estimates. Overall, the study’s findings highlight the need to move beyond average estimation techniques, such as OLS, to those that account for spatially heterogeneous price impacts, such as GWR and MGWR.

Urban Science doi: 10.3390/urbansci10080458

Authors: Sara Rosa Cristina Rakasi Inês Sousa Mariana Amaral Anabela Correia Martins

Background: To date, there are no known published studies in Portugal that link the perceived neighborhood walkability of a specific geographical area to the functional capacity and social participation of older adults living in the community. Thus, the main objective of this study, conducted in Portugal, is to examine whether the perceived neighborhood walkability is associated with functional capacity, walking confidence, social participation, and exercise self-efficacy among community-dwelling older adults, thereby contributing to the national evidence base on the influence of contextual factors on human functioning, with particular relevance to active and healthy aging. Methods: An exploratory, cross-sectional study was conducted using data from older adults (aged 50 and over) living in the community, in Portugal. A member of the research team assessed physical function using objective measures of upper and lower body function, balance and mobility. To assess the perceived neighborhood walkability, a validated questionnaire for Portuguese adults living in the community with good internal consistency (α = 0.848) was used. The walkability dimensions assessed were safety, facilities/surroundings, comfort/esthetics and accessibility/connectivity. The Pearson correlation coefficient was used to analyze the relationships between continuous variables. Differences between groups were analyzed using independent sample Student’s t-tests or analysis of variance (ANOVA) as appropriate. Results: Perceived neighborhood walkability was associated with several sociodemographic, health, and psychosocial variables. Higher educational levels and better self-perceived health were associated with more positive perceptions of walkability. Participants without urinary incontinence and osteoarthritis reported significantly higher walkability scores, particularly in the safety, facilities/surroundings, and comfort/esthetics dimensions. Older age was associated with higher scores in the facilities/surroundings dimension, whereas slower gait speed and higher anxiety levels were associated with lower perceptions in this dimension. Few significant associations were found between perceived neighborhood walkability and objective physical function measures, and these associations were generally weak. Conclusions: Overall, the findings suggest that neighborhood walkability is a multidimensional construct influenced not only by environmental characteristics but also by health status, psychological factors, and individual perceptions. These results reinforce the importance of considering contextual and environmental factors when promoting mobility, participation, and healthy aging among community-dwelling older adults.

Urban Science doi: 10.3390/urbansci10080456

Authors: Abigail Ortiz Curinambe Alvaro Adrian Pérez Sosa Vanessa Raymundo Elvira Ruiz Reyes Crayla Alfaro Cecilia Uribe Quiroz Gustavo Reyes Marilu Loera Paredes

The increase in global carbon dioxide emissions is intensifying climate change and severely affecting diverse communities. Addressing these impacts requires sustainable planning approaches that promote environmental and social balance. This research aims to develop a transferable planning methodology incorporating ex ante evaluation for sustainable productive rural settlements, the application of which is examined through a design proposal in Pocollay, Tacna, used as a case study. The methodology comprises six sequential phases: integrated territorial diagnosis, construction of the multicriteria evaluation model, assessment of the baseline scenario, formulation of the planning model, application of the methodology to the case study, and comparative multicriteria evaluation of the projected scenario. As an application of the methodology, a Master Plan and a productive housing module were developed, integrating the proposed planning principles within a circular economy approach, together with bioclimatic design strategies aimed at resource efficiency, passive comfort, water management, renewable energy integration, and reduced environmental pressure. Compared with the baseline scenario, the projected scenario obtained higher potential performance scores across the architectural, environmental, productive, and socioeconomic indicators evaluated. These results represent expected performance according to predefined criteria rather than impacts observed after construction. In conclusion, the main contribution of the research is the proposed planning and evaluation methodology, which can be replicated or adapted in future applications by recalibrating its indicators, weights, climatic parameters, productive systems, material strategies, and community priorities.

Urban Science doi: 10.3390/urbansci10080457

Authors: Lingguang Wang Changbo Kang Yanchen Qiu Yixuan Shang Xiaomeng Wang Qifeng Yu

Urban traffic systems are increasingly vulnerable to non-recurrent congestion and abnormal traffic fluctuations, posing significant challenges to intelligent traffic management and resilient transportation operations. Existing traffic anomaly detection methods often struggle to simultaneously characterize heterogeneous anomaly patterns under dynamically evolving traffic states, while severe class imbalance and limited data plausibility further constrain detection reliability. To address these challenges, this study proposes a traffic-prior-guided state-aware framework for robust urban traffic anomaly detection. A Multi-Scale Natural Neighborhood (MS-NaN) module transforms one-dimensional traffic flow sequences into a nine-dimensional representation integrating sequence dynamics, multiscale statistical deviations, and spatiotemporal phase characteristics, thereby embedding traffic state priors into the detection process. Building upon these representations, the Dual-Branch Context-Gated Network (DB-CGNet) separately captures instantaneous traffic disruptions and trend-evolving congestion patterns. An adaptive context-aware gated fusion mechanism then combines the branch features to enhance robustness under complex and non-stationary traffic conditions. To improve evaluation realism, high-fidelity baseline traffic data are generated through B-spline smoothing and first-order autoregressive residual modeling, and anomaly patterns are constructed under Highway Capacity Manual (HCM)-constrained capacity reduction mechanisms. Experiments conducted on a 91-day urban expressway dataset demonstrate that the proposed method achieves the best overall performance among eight benchmark models under a 72 min observation window, attaining an F1-score of 0.7757 and an area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC) of 0.9112. Ablation studies further reveal the critical role of traffic prior features in detecting short-duration evolving anomalies. The proposed framework provides a robust and interpretable solution for intelligent urban traffic monitoring, anomaly warning, and resilient traffic operation management.

Urban Science doi: 10.3390/urbansci10080455

Authors: Claudia González-Roldán Fabián Díaz-Muñoz

Public spaces are essential for urban well-being, social interaction, environmental quality, and territorial equity; however, their presence does not necessarily ensure adequate quality, accessibility, or multifunctionality. Although previous research has emphasized the importance of green and public spaces, fewer studies have integrated multidimensional quality assessment, GIS-based spatial analysis, and multicriteria prioritization in intermediate Latin American cities. This study aimed to evaluate spatial inequalities in the quality of urban public spaces in Loja, Ecuador, through a GIS-based multi-attribute composite index. A total of 183 public spaces were assessed using structured field observation of observable conditions and organized into six dimensions: functional, environmental, cultural, recreational, safety, and economic. The data were cleaned, validated, integrated with spatial layers, and analyzed through descriptive, inferential, multivariate, spatial autocorrelation, and multicriteria procedures. The results showed that public space quality was mainly concentrated at low and medium levels, with functional and safety dimensions playing a stronger role in the global index, while cultural, recreational, and economic components showed weaker performance. Spatial analysis revealed significant territorial differences, local clusters, and spatial outliers. The proposed framework provides a replicable tool to diagnose observable public space quality, identify priority intervention areas, and support evidence-based urban planning in other intermediate cities.

Urban Science doi: 10.3390/urbansci10080454

Authors: Xinyan Chen Domenico Chizzoniti Tommaso Lolli

Rapid globalization has caused the architectural and urban homogenization phenomenon, weakening regional characteristics and architectural and urban identity, especially in many historic cities. To address this phenomenon, this paper explores how urban dwellers perceive these processes, offering a user-centered perspective. The research mainly uses a questionnaire-based survey and selects Hangzhou, China, as the research site. It distributed 500 questionnaires and obtained 435 responses, of which 413 valid adult responses were included in the final analysis. Applying both quantitative and qualitative approaches, the research focuses on two phases: the first phase’s results show that the dwellers primarily identify architectural identity through architectural characteristics and daily spatial experiences, while their dissatisfaction with contemporary architecture is mainly based on cultural disconnect, disharmony with the surrounding environment, and formalism. They prefer architecture that can inherit traditional and local characteristics while offering new interpretations and expressions in the contemporary context. Grounded in this questionnaire evidence, the second phase concentrates on translating these perceptions into design insights and approaches, which are as follows: integrate tradition into the design semantics and concepts; reinterpret traditional spatial composition and reasonably insert formal innovations consistent with the local context; incorporate the use of traditional materials and construction; and enhance the connection between the architecture and the surrounding environment and urban tissue. The paper not only expands the discipline and relevant theories but also provides a user-centered, replicable framework for architectural and urban design that strengthens the regionally specific architectural and urban identity to respond to the challenges of homogenization.

Urban Science doi: 10.3390/urbansci10080453

Authors: Raúl Sánchez-Francés Carolina Martínez-Ruiz Esther San José Bárbara Díez José María Sanz Jorge Calvo Silvia Gómez Laura Wendling Juan García-Duro

Urbanisation and climate change have intensified the Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect in European cities, increasing thermal stress and health risks, especially for vulnerable people. Nature-based Solutions (NbS), such as green infrastructures (GI), offer effective mitigation strategies. A notable example is the Horizon 2020 URBAN GreenUP project in Valladolid, Spain, where a green shade shelter infrastructure was installed and monitored between 2019 and 2022 to evaluate its cooling performance and its effects on temperature-based urban heat indicators through the use of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). Local thermal conditions were monitored across two adjacent narrow streets—one with the green shade shelter and one as a control. The installation of the green shade shelter in Valladolid produced measurable thermal benefits. During summer peaks, it reduced ambient temperatures by approximately 0.9 °C, with daily maximum temperatures decreasing by 1.0–3.0 °C. In winter, daily minimum temperatures dropped by around 1.0 °C, while autumn saw an increase of 0.7 °C. Summer minimum temperatures varied, ranging from a 0.2 °C decrease in early summer to a 0.7 °C increase in late summer, with a 0.3 °C rise during peak summer in mid-July. The intervention also reduced the frequency and delayed the onset of days exceeding 35 °C and nights above 20 °C, although the delay in peak tropical nights was limited to seven days. These findings indicate that green shade shelters can contribute to improving street-level thermal conditions and reducing temperature-based heat exposure indicators in dense urban environments.

Urban Science doi: 10.3390/urbansci10080452

Authors: Stefan Milojević Snežana Knežević Miroslav Knežević Aleksandra Vujko

Urban competitiveness has traditionally been associated with infrastructure, economic performance, and innovation capacity, while the role of financial governance has received considerably less attention. This study examines how citizens form perceptions of urban financial integrity and whether such perceptions influence evaluations of urban attractiveness. Drawing on a governance-based framework, the study investigates the relationships among Digital Governance, Financial Transparency, Anti-Fraud Capacity, Financial Integrity, and Urban Attractiveness. Data were collected from 2764 residents of 18 digitally advanced cities across Northern and Western Europe and North America. To enhance methodological rigor, the sample was randomly divided into two equal subsamples and analyzed using Exploratory Factor Analysis, Confirmatory Factor Analysis, and Structural Equation Modeling. The results indicate that Digital Governance is positively associated with both Financial Transparency and Anti-Fraud Capacity, while Financial Transparency and Anti-Fraud Capacity are positively associated with stronger perceptions of Financial Integrity. Financial Integrity emerged as a significant predictor of Urban Attractiveness and served as the principal mechanism through which governance practices influenced broader evaluations of cities. The findings suggest that citizens do not perceive cities as attractive simply because they are digitally advanced; rather, digital governance becomes valuable when it enhances confidence that public financial resources are managed transparently, responsibly, and in the public interest. These results identify Financial Integrity as the key mechanism through which citizens translate governance quality into perceptions of urban attractiveness.

Urban Science doi: 10.3390/urbansci10080451

Authors: Tamás Köpeczi-Bócz

Smart city and smart region governance increasingly relies on data-informed decision-making, stakeholder participation, digital tools, and public feedback. However, these mechanisms do not automatically create institutional learning. This article examines sustainable smart region governance as an institutional learnability problem and asks whether participation, local knowledge, and feedback are converted into adaptive action and retained as institutional memory. The study applies a Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analyses extension for Scoping Reviews (PRISMA-ScR)-informed structured evidence mapping combined with an embedded regional case diagnosis from the Tokaj Wine Region, Hungary. The analysis integrates the literature on smart governance, learning regions, higher education quality assurance, territorial resilience, and adaptive governance with regional governance observation materials, stakeholder survey data, coding tables, calculation workbooks, and analytical figures deposited in a public Figshare dataset. The results identify the Act/Remember gap as the central learning-cycle disruption. Planning, implementation, monitoring, and consultation may be present, but feedback often fails to become adaptive action, and action is weakly retained as institutional memory. The comparison with higher education quality assurance shows that structured feedback and continuous improvement principles are transferable only as learning logic, not as procedural models. The findings also show that single-profile territories are especially vulnerable to delayed learning, strategic lock-in, and weak community knowledge-building. The article contributes to smart governance research by proposing institutional learnability as a diagnostic capacity of sustainable smart regions. It argues that digital tools should function as learning infrastructure supporting traceability, feedback-to-action mechanisms, and institutional memory, rather than as substitutes for human deliberation, trust, and collective responsibility.

Urban Science doi: 10.3390/urbansci10080450

Authors: Marcel Bartumeu Ramentol Parfait Atchade-Adelomou Adrian Mora-Carrero Kent Larson Luis Alonso-Pastor Marta Domenech

Planning long-term national development under uncertainty is difficult for small states, where indicators are fragmented, frequently revised, and span tightly coupled social, economic, and environmental domains. Scenario tools can support such decisions without committing to a single forecast, but they often lack historical grounding, cross-domain consistency, reproducible update pipelines, and explicit links between policy choices and outcomes. We present the Andorra Scenario Engine, a transparent, data-grounded framework that harmonizes multi-source national indicators into a consistent state vector and propagates four contrasting pathways—Continuity, Overgrowth, Degrowth, and Density—to 2049 through bounded, coupled update rules. The engine belongs to the exploratory-modelling tradition: an upstream, auditable layer toward a national digital twin rather than a forecasting system, whose outputs are internally consistent conditional futures. A central structural modelling choice is to derive population endogenously from GDP growth via a lagged labour-immigration elasticity (0.40 at a one-year lag, 0.10 at two years), grounded in IMF (2025) and World Bank data. A back-cast benchmark quantifies the accuracy cost of this choice (9.5% population RMSE against 1.7% for a linear trend), accepted in exchange for a policy-relevant causal lever. Three macroeconomic parameters and a housing-affordability anchor are calibrated to 2010–2024 official statistics (Nelder–Mead; RMSE = 1.77% on real GDP per capita). Scenario endpoints for 2049 range from 70,049 (Degrowth) to 174,002 (Overgrowth); a sensitivity audit identifies the housing-affordability threshold and the lag-1 elasticity as the load-bearing assumptions on which the headline signals depend. The framework provides a reproducible, human-in-the-loop baseline for comparing policy-relevant trade-offs and binding constraints in data-scarce microstates.

Urban Science doi: 10.3390/urbansci10080449

Authors: Patcha Siwapornpitak Napat Harnpornchai

Economic development is multidimensional, yet provincial comparisons in Thailand often rely on individual indicators or broad sustainability indices. This study constructs separate TOPSIS rankings of economic prosperity and distributional outcomes for all 77 Thai provinces. Six prosperity indicators capture economic output, human capital, spatial agglomeration, labor market outcomes, and structural transformation, while four distributional indicators capture income inequality, economic vulnerability, informal employment, and household dependency. The analysis uses 2024 provincial accounts and Labor Force Survey microdata, with comparisons for 2022–2024. Prosperity is concentrated in Bangkok, the surrounding metropolitan region, and the Eastern Seaboard, while Phuket represents a distinct tourism-led pathway. Favorable distributional outcomes are concentrated within the metropolitan–industrial corridor, whereas disadvantage is more prevalent in the North and Northeast. The rankings are associated but conceptually distinct, and the prosperity ranking differs meaningfully from one based solely on GPP per capita. The prosperity ranking is highly stable over time, while the distributional ranking exhibits substantial stability after harmonizing income coverage. Both rankings are robust to alternative normalization procedures, weighting schemes, and aggregation methods. Spatial statistics confirm clustering. The findings demonstrate the value of separating economic prosperity from distributional disadvantage when benchmarking provincial development and assessing urban–regional disparities.

Urban Science doi: 10.3390/urbansci10080448

Authors: Saif Ul Haq Muhammad Iqbal Musaddaq Azeem Muhammad Mohsin Rashid Muhammad Kashif

This study aims to examine the role of Relational Stakeholder Management (RSM) on the success of sustainable construction projects in urban areas of Pakistan. The study also examines the mediating role of trust (competence trust, integrity trust, and intuitive trust) and the moderating role of project managers’ leadership skills. Data were collected from 303 professionals working on sustainable construction projects in Pakistan and analyzed using Structural Equation Modeling (SEM). The results show that RSM has a positive and significant direct impact on the success of sustainable construction projects, while competence trust and integrity trust mediate this relationship. However, Intuitive Trust did not mediate the relationship between RSM and project success. Furthermore, the project manager’s leadership competencies strengthen relationships with relational stakeholders and foster trust, thereby improving overall project success. This research highlights that, in addition to technical factors, human and relational aspects are crucial to the success of energy-efficient and low-carbon construction projects in urban areas of Pakistan. The study provides integrated empirical evidence on the interplay between stakeholder relationships, trust, and leadership, specifically in the context of sustainable construction projects in urban areas of Pakistan. The findings of the study provide practical insights to improve RSM, develop trust, and strengthen leadership competencies to enhance success in sustainable construction projects.

Urban Science doi: 10.3390/urbansci10080447

Authors: Jiuxing Wu Fanfan Qian

Rapid urbanization can shrink and fragment cultivated land while raising agricultural productivity, creating mismatches among spatial configuration, functional performance, and management modes. These dimensions are rarely assessed in a unified, value-neutral framework. We developed a Spatial–Functional–Modal (SFM) framework to evaluate multidimensional synchronicity in 46 county-level units of the Nanjing Metropolitan Area, China, using Period 6 data spanning 2000–2022. We combined 18 entropy-weighted indicators with coupling and coupling coordination degree (CCD) models at county and municipal scales. Regional SFM-CCD rose from 0.304 to 0.327 but remained in the model-defined near-misalignment category, while average coupling declined from 0.747 to 0.740. All pairwise CCDs increased, but coupling trajectories differed: spatial–functional coupling weakened, spatial–modal coupling diverged between Jiangsu and Anhui, and functional–modal coupling strengthened. Anhui’s SFM-CCD increased more consistently and surpassed Jiangsu in later years. Nanjing remained a relative synchronicity trough, reflecting weaker alignment among normalized dimensions rather than lower absolute agricultural capacity. Alternative weights and ±10% and ±20% perturbations largely preserved relative rankings and the overall temporal pattern, but absolute values and categories remained method-sensitive. The framework diagnoses asynchronous transitions and can inform differentiated governance in other rapidly urbanizing regions.

Urban Science doi: 10.3390/urbansci10080446

Authors: Aleksandar Trifunović Ivan Ivanović Nenad Marković Zoran Vidović Tijana Ivanišević

The rapid transition toward electric mobility is widely recognized as a key strategy for improving urban environmental quality. However, while electric vehicles eliminate tailpipe emissions, they continue to contribute to environmental pressures through non-exhaust sources such as tire wear, road surface abrasion, and particle resuspension. This study develops a composite index framework for assessing road-segment-level operational environmental burdens associated with electric traffic, focusing on traffic operations, electric vehicle load characteristics, non-exhaust emission potential, and meteorological dispersion conditions. The framework does not constitute a life-cycle assessment and does not include battery production, electricity-generation mix, or other upstream environmental impacts. The framework combines four dimensions of influence: traffic operations, electric vehicle characteristics, non-exhaust emission processes, and meteorological dispersion conditions. Indicator selection was performed using the Delphi method, while indicator weights were determined through the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP). The methodological contribution lies not in the individual methods applied, but in their integration into a road-segment-level assessment framework specifically designed to identify and prioritize environmentally sensitive locations under traffic electrification scenarios. The resulting model incorporates sixteen indicators aggregated into a single environmental impact index that enables the ranking, classification, and prioritization of urban road segments according to their environmental burden. A case study conducted on selected urban streets demonstrates that non-exhaust emission indicators, particularly tire wear and particle resuspension, represent the most influential factors in the assessment process. Within the illustrative five-segment case study, the relative road-segment ranking remained unchanged under the electrified-traffic scenario, while the structure of the assessed burden shifted toward non-exhaust processes. The proposed framework provides a practical decision-support tool for urban planners and transport authorities by enabling the identification of environmentally sensitive locations, prioritization of infrastructure interventions, and support for sustainable mobility strategies in increasingly electrified urban transport systems.

Urban Science doi: 10.3390/urbansci10080445

Authors: Matej Cenky Jozef Bendik Peter Janiga

Freely accessible weather APIs are an attractive input for photovoltaic (PV) power prediction, yet how their reference-based error carries through—under temporal aggregation—into day-ahead PV energy is rarely quantified before model development. This study audits eight freely accessible weather-data services—seven forecast services and the Meteostat observational archive—and finds that, for the endpoints, subscription tiers, and collection period evaluated here, only two of the forecast services expose hourly global horizontal irradiance (GHI), while a third advertised irradiance field returns empty—itself a material result for municipal integrators. The two irradiance-capable services are propagated through a common physical PV model of the 548 kWp east–west rooftop plant being built on a university campus in Bratislava, Slovakia, against independent references (CAMS irradiance; NASA POWER temperature and wind). Throughout, “error” denotes discrepancy against the reference, not measurement truth. Over a common 62-day spring–summer window, the day-ahead daily-energy mean absolute error (MAE, relative to mean reference daily energy) is 10–11% for both sources; Open-Meteo’s winter-inclusive own window raises its value to about 13%. On the matched window, Open-Meteo has the lower hourly GHI RMSE (121 vs. 128 W·m−2), yet this advantage does not carry through to day-ahead energy—the point-estimate ordering even changes—and neither matched-window difference is statistically resolved. Because daily aggregation rewards low bias over low scatter, this ordering change is already present in daily GHI energy—before the PV conversion—so hourly irradiance accuracy alone does not determine day-ahead energy. Propagated input-data auditing is therefore an advisable step before ML-based PV forecasting and day-ahead scheduling of urban distributed PV.

Urban Science doi: 10.3390/urbansci10080444

Authors: Tamer ElSerafi

Smart mobility strategies often emphasize digital information, applications, and data-driven transport management, while giving less attention to the stop-level conditions that shape passengers’ everyday experience. This study develops and applies a Smart Bus Stop Readiness Index (SBSRI) to assess seven interchange bus stops in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. The index integrates five weighted dimensions: Passenger Information and Digital Readiness; Physical and Thermal Comfort Provision; Pedestrian Accessibility and Universal Design; Safety and Security; and Land-Use and Activity Integration. Data were collected through field audits, spatial mapping, passenger observations, and a short survey of 71 users. The results indicate that the selected stops have operational interchange importance but generally limited readiness. The mean SBSRI score was 39.07/100; under the adopted planning-oriented classification scheme, only Al-Balad Main Station A achieved moderate readiness, while the remaining stops were classified as showing low or very low readiness. Physical and Thermal Comfort Provision was the weakest dimension, particularly in relation to shade, seating, shelter, and shaded waiting areas. Passenger information and pedestrian accessibility also showed substantial deficiencies. Sensitivity analysis indicated that the principal stop rankings remained stable under alternative weighting scenarios, although category labels were more responsive to threshold selection. This study concludes that smart bus stop readiness should be assessed as a socio-technical condition integrating digital systems with climate-responsive waiting provision, pedestrian accessibility, safety, and the surrounding urban context.

Urban Science doi: 10.3390/urbansci10080443

Authors: Angela Girardo Edmond Manahasa Odeta Manahasa Emina Zejnilović

This research examines the impact of urbicide on urban memory, using the city of Sarajevo as a case study. Urbicide is defined as the deliberate destruction of the built environment, including both its tangible and intangible aspects. This study proposes a place-based, multilayered methodological framework to analyze the effects of urbicide on the erasure of urban memory among inhabitants, as well as on traumatic and transformed urban memory. The methodological approach proposed and used in this research includes desk research; urban analysis to reveal the material evidence of destruction; sampling to categorize the level of destruction; visual documentation; surveying to measure the impact of urbicide on urban memory; thematic analysis to interpret the results; and mapping to locate both the tangible and intangible aspects of the survey results. The suggested methodological approach is tested through a pilot study in the city of Sarajevo, 31 years after the end of the 1992–95 siege. The results of the pilot survey presented in this paper, although partial due to the sample size, allowed us to explore the feasibility of the method and to implement the necessary improvements to measure the impacts of urbicide on city memory. Furthermore, the pilot study highlighted the need for a holistic, mixed-methods approach to investigate both the tangible and intangible aspects of urbicide, with a specific emphasis on the use of visual questionnaires.

Urban Science doi: 10.3390/urbansci10080442

Authors: Lasithasree Lakshmanan Sudhagar Nagarajan

Three-dimensional (3D) building reconstruction plays an important role in urban planning, disaster resilience, and sustainable infrastructure development. Conventional approaches based on airborne Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) data can be computationally intensive and often require large labeled datasets, particularly for large-scale applications. This study presents a semi-automated workflow for reconstructing multi-level 3D building models by integrating airborne LiDAR point cloud data with building footprints extracted from National Agriculture Imagery Program (NAIP) imagery using a Mask Region-Based Convolutional Neural Network (Mask R-CNN). The extracted footprints were used to spatially isolate building-specific LiDAR subsets for 3D reconstruction. The proposed methodology generated building models at multiple Levels of Detail (LOD), ranging from two-dimensional (2D) footprints to volumetric representations with detailed roof structures. Building footprint extraction was quantitatively evaluated against LiDAR-derived footprints generated using Density-Based Spatial Clustering of Applications with Noise (DBSCAN), which served as the reference dataset and detected buildings obscured by tree canopy. The reconstruction workflow was implemented in Open3D and incorporated a boundary-aware mesh refinement strategy based on ear-clipping triangulation to improve rooftop continuity in LOD2 models. The proposed footprint extraction framework achieved a mean Intersection over Union (IoU) of 0.8226 relative to LiDAR-derived reference building footprints, indicating reliable building delineation that supports the proposed multi-level 3D building reconstruction workflow.

Urban Science doi: 10.3390/urbansci10080441

Authors: Pawita Boonrat Voravika Wattanasoontorn

The management of municipal solid waste (MSW) in a region driven by tourism is a challenge. The dynamics of the waste produced can fluctuate significantly. Islands are particularly vulnerable due to geographic constraints and limited infrastructure. Using data to forecast and evaluate MSW management strategies would help make policy decisions. This research introduces a data-driven framework that integrates tourism dynamics with a predictive baseline for MSW generation and facilitates ongoing evaluation of system performance. The framework comprises four operational zones, namely data acquisition, baseline modelling, deviation analysis, and dashboard-based communication. It also follows the waste stream from upstream waste generation, through midstream collection and transfer, to downstream treatment and disposal. Phuket Island, Thailand, was chosen as a case study. The island has strong tourism-driven waste variability, limited waste management infrastructure, and a clear upstream–midstream–downstream waste-management chain. Tourism was explicitly integrated as an exogenous factor to capture transient demand effects. The amount of MSW was modelled using monthly tourism data. Support Vector Regression was selected to establish the expected waste baseline owing to its high predictive accuracy (MAE = 1143 t, RMSE = 1352 t and MAPE = 3.3%) outperforming other tested models (i.e., SARIMAX, Mean Baseline, Seasonal Naive, Random Forest and Histogram-Based Gradient Boost). Then, it was used to establish the baseline under normal conditions. The residual was then calculated as the difference between the observed values, and the performance of the maintenance system can be further assessed using the deviation analysis. A normal range defined within 3σ of the residual percentages from a baseline; values outside this range are flagged as anomalies. The results were integrated into a prototype dashboard to support operational monitoring, policy evaluation, and stakeholder-orientated interpretation. The proposed framework provides a practical basis for an evidence-based adaptive policy in tourism-dependent regions. Future work should incorporate waste composition and spatially explicit data to further improve the MSW management protocol. Considering that tourism demand exhibits seasonal patterns influenced by external factors, the results of this research offer an invaluable tool for waste management.

Urban Science doi: 10.3390/urbansci10080440

Authors: José Rojas-Quiroz Carlos Marmolejo-Duarte

Machine learning (ML) models like XGBoost have gained traction in housing valuation as they outperform classical hedonic models in predictive accuracy. However, their black box nature has limited their interpretability, until recent advances like SHAP values enabled deeper insights into variable contributions. This study explores whether XGBoost not only predicts housing prices more accurately but can also help identify latent submarket structures, without imposing predefined spatial or socioeconomic boundaries. Using a raw dataset of 7092 housing listings from Barcelona (reduced to 6527 unique listings and finally to 6112 observations after outlier removal), we employ a sequential methodological framework: first, OLS and Spatial Durbin Models identify statistically significant predictors while accounting for spatial dependence; second, an XGBoost model is trained with these validated variables to extract SHAP values quantifying each attribute’s model-attributed contribution to individual predicted prices; third, clustering these SHAP values reveals three distinct submarkets with systematic differences in model-attributed valuation patterns. We validate the resulting segments through five complementary procedures: out-of-sample cluster assignment verifying segment generalizability; nested OLS interaction models that formally test differences in model-attributed valuation patterns across clusters; spatial block bootstrap resampling that assesses cluster stability under geographic subsampling; non-parametric tests against the 2017 cadastral value—an independent administrative proxy for spatial value stratification; and spatial autocorrelation statistics confirming non-random geographic structure. Together, this multi-pronged validation provides convergent evidence that the identified segments capture stable and externally coherent patterns in the model’s learned valuation structure. Unlike prior studies focused solely on prediction, our approach bridges ML’s technical rigor with econometric interpretability. We argue that this capability may stem from XGBoost’s tree-based architecture, which naturally partitions the feature space to accommodate heterogeneous valuation patterns. Future research could extend this framework to more recent tree-based models, further advancing interpretable ML for housing market analysis.

Urban Science doi: 10.3390/urbansci10080439

Authors: Ravish Dubey Simone Mora Carlo Ratti

Urban areas contribute a dominant share of global carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, yet city-scale emission estimates remain highly uncertain due to the limited spatial and temporal resolution of existing observation methods. This review paper examined the potential of horizontally scanning Differential Absorption LiDAR (DIAL) systems to address these gaps in urban CO2 monitoring. We reviewed current top-down and bottom-up approaches, identified their limitations in resolving intra-urban variability, and outlined a conceptual framework for deploying compact, eye-safe CO2 DIAL systems on elevated urban structures. We reviewed methods that combined horizontal CO2 scanning with wind measurements to enable high-resolution mapping of CO2 distributions, assessment of boundary-layer effects, and estimation of urban carbon fluxes using established mass-balance and inversion techniques. Conceptual deployment scenarios, illustrated using Boston as an example, demonstrated how a single elevated LiDAR unit could provide near-city-wide coverage and capture neighborhood-scale emission patterns. We further discussed calibration strategies, safety considerations, and integration with existing sensor networks and column observations. This review concluded horizontal CO2 LiDAR represents a promising pathway toward high-resolution, observation-based urban carbon monitoring, offering a complementary tool to existing methods and supporting future efforts to verify emission inventories, evaluate mitigation policies, and advance city-scale carbon management.

Urban Science doi: 10.3390/urbansci10080438

Authors: Yanelba E. Abreu-Rojas Juan C. Sala-Rosario Antonio Torres-Valle Antonio Jurado-Málaga Ulises J. Jauregui-Haza

Disaster risk perception in informal urban settlements remains insufficiently understood despite its importance for climate adaptation and urban resilience policies. This study evaluated disaster risk perception among residents of nine informal settlements in Greater Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, focusing on the relationship between the subjective risk of disaster, poverty, and socio-environmental vulnerability. A mixed-methods approach was applied using the RISKPERCEP algorithm and a structured survey composed of 98 questions grouped into key perception variables. A total of 198 surveys were conducted across four municipalities, supported by expert consultation, probabilistic sample-size calculation, and statistical analyses including chi-square tests and Cramér’s V coefficients. The results revealed a generalized moderate underestimation of climate-related risks, mainly associated with limited understanding of hazards, weak institutional trust, low personal involvement, poor memory of past disasters, and reduced concern about consequences. Socioeconomic deprivation, particularly among women, retirees, and low-income groups, was strongly associated with higher perceived vulnerability. Statistical analyses demonstrated a dense and multidimensional network of interdependent social, economic, and spatial variables shaping vulnerability. The study concludes that low disaster risk perception constitutes a major barrier to climate adaptation in informal settlements and highlights the need for integrated public policies combining social protection, climate education, urban resilience, and community-based adaptation strategies. The implications of this study point to the use of a disaster risk perception inquiry method at the community level, structured around specific variables that allow the identification of underlying causes of the widespread underestimation of disaster risk. This approach enables the design of adaptive policies—both structural and non-structural—that explicitly incorporate these aspects when formulating resilience measures. Future research should aim to generalize the study to other communities across the country, preceded by addressing the limitations identified.

Urban Science doi: 10.3390/urbansci10080437

Authors: Vlad Stoicescu Daniela Ioana Manea Vasile Alecsandru Strat Răzvan Popescu Alina-Cornelia Luchian (Chiriac) Radu Moldoveanu Alexandra Stefan

European smart cities face a distinct decarbonisation challenge in the gas component of urban energy consumption, which cannot be addressed through internal optimisation alone. The European Union (EU) Mission for Climate-Neutral and Smart Cities selected 112 cities for climate neutrality by 2030, including Bucharest Sector 2, Cluj-Napoca, and Suceava in Romania. The Mission timeline coincides with the Russian pipeline gas phase-out under Regulation (EU) 2026/261, the 5 August 2026 transposition deadline for the Hydrogen and Decarbonised Gas Market Package (also referred to as the Fourth Gas Package), and the post-Hormuz energy market environment of 2026. This paper develops a hinterland framework that links Romanian Mission cities to their rural renewable gas supply through biomethane and renewable hydrogen production, integrated with circular bioeconomy strategies and routed through the national transmission system operated by Transgaz. The empirical analysis combines documentary evidence from the May 2026 consultation on Government Emergency Ordinance 9/2026, institutional documentation of Transgaz and Romgaz, and the comparative European literature on smart city renewable energy integration. Findings show that Mission city decarbonisation pathways depend on rural-to-urban gas infrastructure calibration under the post-2024 regulatory cascade. The paper proposes specific deployment strategies for each Romanian Mission city.

Urban Science doi: 10.3390/urbansci10080436

Authors: Balbine Alindekon Bopaki Phogole Kowiyou Yessoufou

Urban Heat Island (UHI) effects are increasingly acknowledged as a critical urban climate challenge with far-reaching consequences for human health and overall well-being. However, the conceptual structure, temporal evolution, and intellectual landscape of studies examining the relationships between UHI and human well-being remain fragmented, thereby constraining the development of integrated knowledge frameworks needed to guide future research, urban adaptation strategies, and evidence-based policy interventions. To this end, a total of 4857 studies were retrieved from the Scopus and Web of Science databases and screened following the PRISMA guidelines. These studies were then analyzed using Bibliometrix and VOSviewer. The results reveal a rapid and exponential growth in scientific output, particularly after 2010, with the output reaching its highest level in recent years. These outputs were shaped mostly in China and the United States with a well-established international collaboration network, while the Global South remain significantly underrepresented in scientific productions. We also found that studies are primarily structured around four dominant research clusters: urban heat island, thermal comfort, land surface temperature, and climate change. Furthermore, early studies predominantly focused on urban surface properties and built-environment characteristics, while recent research has increasingly shifted toward human health impacts, thermal stress, heat vulnerability, and well-being. Emerging research directions further highlight growing interest in nature-based solutions for mitigating UHI effects, alongside the application of advanced technologies such as machine learning and remote sensing for high-resolution urban climate assessment. Overall, our findings indicate a transition toward a more integrated urban climate–health–well-being research framework, while simultaneously revealing persistent geographical and conceptual gaps, particularly across the Global South. We therefore advocate for increased empirical research, stronger international collaboration, and context-specific urban adaptation strategies to better safeguard human well-being under intensifying urban heat conditions.

Urban Science doi: 10.3390/urbansci10080435

Authors: Alessandro Martinelli

Urban regeneration increasingly depends on the governance mechanism that makes design-intensive change administratively possible. This paper examines a semi-formal coordination forum established in Hsinchu, Taiwan, during the mayoralty of Chih-Chien Lin (2014–2022). Utilizing elite interviews and documentary sources, the research reconstructs how the forum convened bureau heads, external consultants, designers, and other stakeholders to coordinate a portfolio of regeneration projects. The findings indicate that the forum functioned as a cross-boundary governance interface. Rather than replacing formal procedures, it operated upstream and in parallel to clarify responsibilities, mediate design judgment, enhance procurement credibility, and expedite implementation through iterative review. Furthermore, the analysis demonstrates that the forum cannot be classified within established governance design categories such as steering committee, task force, project office, or design review panel. Instead, it represents a hybrid model that integrates diverse characteristics, with its value derived from a complex micro-organization of actors and routines over time.

Urban Science doi: 10.3390/urbansci10080434

Authors: Jinyue Zhang Victoria Luo Xinrui Wen Angela Liu Tian Qiu Yilin Wei

Citizen-sourced non-emergency reporting is an increasingly important component of smart-city governance, yet cities often lack systematic methods for evaluating alternative participation designs before deployment. This study develops a design-oriented pre-deployment evaluation framework for assessing citizen adoption of a proposed reporting application and comparing alternative incentive mechanisms. Drawing on an extended UTAUT framework, the study introduces perceived value (PV) as a mediating mechanism linking incentive framings to behavioral intention. A scenario-based survey experiment with 580 participants in the Greater Toronto Area compared the following four conditions: control, monetary incentive, recognition, and donation-based community-benefit incentive. Data were analyzed using PLS-SEM and bootstrapped mediation analysis. Results indicate that performance expectancy and attitude are the strongest predictors of behavioral intention, while trust was significantly associated with both cognitive and affective evaluations of the reporting system. Social influence becomes non-significant once these evaluations are included. Recognition and donation-based community-benefit incentives significantly increased perceived value and showed both direct and indirect effects on performance expectancy and behavioral intention. At the behavioral-intention stage, indirect effects accounted for approximately 80% of their respective total effects, indicating complementary mediation with indirect effects predominating. By contrast, the specific $2 city-credit condition showed no significant direct, indirect, or total effect. Rather than proposing a new acceptance theory, the study demonstrates how technology acceptance modeling can be repurposed as a practical decision-support framework for evaluating alternative civic-technology designs before system launch. Limitations related to the pre-deployment setting and intention-based measures are acknowledged, and future research directions involving field deployment and longitudinal participation analysis are discussed.

Urban Science doi: 10.3390/urbansci10080433

Authors: Alberto Rodríguez-Barcón Luciano González Alfaya Patricia Muñiz Núñez

The COVID-19 pandemic triggered an unprecedented collective reflection on everyday urban life, reshaping how citizens perceived proximity, mobility patterns, and the sustainability of everyday transport systems. This article examines whether these pandemic-induced reflections resonated with the core principles of the 15-Minute City, understood not as a policy blueprint but as an emergent social imaginary. Drawing on a large-scale comparative survey conducted during the strictest lockdown phase in April–May 2020 (n = 9575), the study analyses survey respondents’ desires and expectations regarding post-pandemic urban change across nine Ibero-American countries: Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico, Peru, Portugal, and Spain. Using one-way ANOVA and Tukey post hoc tests, the results reveal a strong and widely shared normative orientation toward greener, more walkable, and more localized urban environments, all of which are key dimensions of sustainable urban mobility transitions, including reduced car dependence and a greater reliance on active transport modes such as walking and cycling. However, these aspirations are consistently accompanied by significantly lower expectations of implementation, resulting in a pronounced desire–expectation gap across all countries. This gap displays clear geographical variation and appears closely associated with perceived governance capacity and institutional trust, with European countries showing greater alignment between aspiration and expectation than their Latin American counterparts. The findings suggest that, even in the absence of explicit policy discourse, respondents expressed aspirational urban imaginaries displaying affinities with principles commonly associated with the 15-Minute City framework. By empirically capturing these bottom-up imaginaries, the study contributes to debates on sustainable urban transport and mobility transitions by highlighting the social foundations and governance constraints of proximity-based planning across diverse institutional contexts.

Urban Science doi: 10.3390/urbansci10080432

Authors: Xinghan Gong Yu Yan Caicai Xu Yating Fan Doreen H. Liu

Global climate change and rapid urbanization have intensified extreme precipitation events, making urban pluvial flood risk management particularly urgent. However, existing research exhibits theoretical and methodological limitations in reconciling pluvial flood resilience within high-density urban development, especially lacking a quantitative framework for human mobility resilience based on natural hydrological units. To address this, this study takes 48 natural catchment areas in Shenzhen as research units. By integrating mobile phone signaling data, remote sensing imagery, and multi-dimensional spatial form indicators, it constructs a post-disaster recovery curve based on population dynamics to quantify human mobility resilience. Using Principal Component Analysis (PCA), Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) regression, and the K-means clustering method, this research analyzes the mechanisms through which green infrastructure, road network structure, and three-dimensional building morphology influence resilience. The results show that three-dimensional building morphology is the core driver of post-disaster recovery capacity, with Floor Area Ratio (FAR), Standard Deviation of Building Height (SDBH), and Building Coverage Ratio (BCR) significantly promoting recovery, while Building Shape Coefficient (BSC) exerts an inhibitory effect. A key comparative analysis reveals that the model based on natural catchment areas has significantly better explanatory power than the model using stormwater management units, and the dominant factors differ: building morphology factors are more prominent in natural hydrological units, whereas road network structure factors are more significant in stormwater management units. This study confirms that natural geographic boundaries can more authentically reveal the intrinsic “morphology–resilience” relationship, providing an important theoretical and empirical basis for optimizing the planning and management units of sponge cities in high-density urban areas.

Urban Science doi: 10.3390/urbansci10080431

Authors: Tássia Faria de Assis Victor Hugo Souza de Abreu Lino Guimarães Marujo Marcio de Almeida D’Agosto

Sustainable construction has emerged as a strategic response to contemporary environmental, social, and economic challenges, particularly in sectors with high resource consumption, such as logistics infrastructure. This study adapts and applies existing sustainability assessment frameworks to the specific context of logistics buildings by integrating Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) sustainability criteria with a Triple Bottom Line (TBL)-based materiality matrix. The research investigates how sustainability practices associated with LEED criteria can contribute to economic, environmental, and social performance within the TBL framework. To support this assessment, a materiality matrix is developed by integrating stakeholder perspectives and the potential impacts of sustainability practices across TBL dimensions, enabling the identification and prioritization of the most relevant strategies for the logistics context. Additionally, the study examines the contribution of LEED-based strategies to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) within these dimensions. The main contribution of the study is the adaptation and application of established sustainability assessment frameworks to logistics projects through a structured decision-support framework that integrates LEED sustainability criteria, stakeholder-based materiality assessment, TBL perspectives, and sensitivity analysis to support sustainability-oriented decision-making.

Urban Science doi: 10.3390/urbansci10080430

Authors: Jamal Al-Qawasmi Md Rafsun Jany Ziad Ashour

Public open space (POS) assessment tools have proliferated across disciplines and application contexts, yet their results often remain difficult to compare. Existing research has largely attributed this divergence to differences in indicator selection, overlooking the broader assessment architecture within which indicators acquire meaning. This study examines why POS assessment tools diverge by conceptualizing them as layered socio-technical sign systems. A systematic literature review identified 38 POS assessment tools, which were analyzed through structured content analysis. Twenty empirically derived attributes were mapped to a five-level semiotic framework comprising the empiric, syntactic, semantic, pragmatic, and social levels. The findings demonstrate that divergence is systematic rather than incidental and extends well beyond indicator content. At the empiric level, 57.9% of tools lack complete operational definitions, while 55.3% rely exclusively on subjective indicators. Structurally, 55.3% function as assessment frameworks rather than fully operational tools, reflecting substantial variation in procedural closure. Across all five semiotic levels, the cumulative interaction of measurement practices, structural organization, conceptual framing, intended application and institutional context generates cross-level structural misalignment that fundamentally constrains comparability. In response, this study proposes a semiotic compliance framework that specifies minimum documentation requirements for improving transparency, internal coherence, and interpretability without prescribing indicator standardization. The findings demonstrate that meaningful comparisons among POS assessment tools depend less on reducing indicator diversity than on explicitly aligning and documenting the multiple semiotic layers through which assessment systems generate meaning and support decision-making. The framework provides practical guidance for developing, evaluating, selecting, and comparing future POS assessment tools while preserving the contextual diversity required across different planning and governance settings.

Urban Science doi: 10.3390/urbansci10080429

Authors: Vanessa Raymundo Martinez Eder Villagaray Apolaya Aaron Mamani Fernandez Marianela Sedano Guisela Yabar Torres Tito Vilchez Vilchez Julio Casquero Zaidman Abigail Ortiz Curinambe

The purpose of this research is to propose a sustainable urban support regeneration system aimed at recovering the historic urban landscape of Rimac, Lima (2024). The Historic Center of Rimac is currently undervalued due to several issues affecting the district, including citizen insecurity, the limited percentage of green areas, excessive and unplanned urban growth, the abandonment of the district’s historic centers, and its disconnection from the surrounding urban environment. The methodology was developed through a review of bibliographic documents, such as scientific publications, together with the use of 2D and 3D software tools, which enabled the collection of environmental, cultural, physical–spatial, and urban information. The implementation of sustainable public spaces within the historic urban landscape of Rimac will transform the area into an attractive tourist and cultural destination. The viewpoints will provide panoramic views, the urban forests will improve air quality and increase green areas, and the site museum will preserve and disseminate the rich local history. Together, these interventions will promote urban regeneration, community wellbeing, and the sustainable development of the area, thereby offering an efficient proposal aimed at optimizing the district’s potential and implementing strategies that contribute to the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Urban Science doi: 10.3390/urbansci10080428

Authors: Zeynep Atas Yuvacan Atmaca Zemzem Tasguzen Polat

Historic water infrastructure has often been treated primarily as a technical system, while its relationships with urban form, architectural organization, and everyday life have received less attention. Focusing on the old city of Mardin, this study examines historic water infrastructure, including partially accessible underground routes and their above-ground interfaces, as a constitutive component of spatial organization in a settlement shaped by arid climatic conditions and steep topography. A multi-scalar spatial-decoding approach combines Quantum Geographic Information System (QGIS)-based mapping, morphological and sectional analysis, Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR)-based three-dimensional documentation, archival research, field observation, and oral testimony. The findings reveal a decentralized configuration of largely independent gravity-fed source-to-outlet routes embedded across urban and architectural scales. Water access, maintenance requirements, and architectural integration contributed to the organization of public nodes, institutional buildings, domestic spaces, and everyday practices without independently determining them. The transition to centralized modern supply disrupted these embedded relationships and transformed the visibility, accessibility, use, and situated knowledge of water. Methodologically, the study offers a transferable cross-scalar approach for reconstructing relationships between partially concealed infrastructure and visible urban form.

Urban Science doi: 10.3390/urbansci10080427

Authors: Yasmany García-Ramírez Juan Diego Ríos-Arévalo Michael Sanmartín-Jaramillo Eduardo Romero-Aguilar

Illegal parking is a persistent challenge in central areas of intermediate cities, where growing demand for curb access competes with limited road space, pedestrian circulation, and public transport operations. While previous research on parking management and curbside regulation has documented links between parking behavior, congestion, and street performance, empirical evidence based on direct street-segment observations remains limited in Latin American intermediate-city contexts. This study examines the distribution across observed street segments, user profile, and urban impacts of parking events across six commercial street segments in central Loja, Ecuador. A total of 1425 parking events were recorded between 11 and 28 May 2026 and classified by maneuver type, vehicle type, apparent use, parking reason, companions, operational conditions, and impacts on congestion, pedestrian circulation, and public transport. Descriptive statistics, exact confidence intervals, chi-square tests with Cramér’s V, false discovery rate correction, standardized residuals, and adjusted logistic regression models were applied. Results show that 64.4% of observed events were infractions, mainly prohibited-zone parking (38.9%) and double parking (25.5%). Infraction type varied strongly by street segment (Cramér’s V = 0.651). Adjusted congestion probabilities were substantially higher for double parking (45.0%) and prohibited-zone parking (41.3%) than for non-infraction events (10.2%). The findings indicate substantial heterogeneity in illegal-parking prevalence and composition among the six observed street segments, together with significant associations between parking infractions and urban street performance. These results identify segment-specific differences within the study area but should not be interpreted as evidence of spatial predictability beyond the observed locations and period.

Urban Science doi: 10.3390/urbansci10080426

Authors: Qixiang Geng Shufang Zhao Hang Yang Xi Wang

The Guangdong–Hong Kong–Macao Greater Bay Area (GBA) is a densely populated, highly connected coastal urban region that is exposed to typhoons, extreme rainfall, flooding, storm surges, heat-related risks, and public health emergencies. Existing studies have clarified many aspects of hazard exposure and spatial vulnerability, but evidence on how residents receive warnings, interpret risks, prepare, evacuate, and contribute to community resilience remains dispersed across disciplines and jurisdictions. This study maps the intellectual structure and thematic evolution of research on residents’ responses to urban disaster risks in the GBA. Following a PRISMA 2020-aligned identification and screening process, 144 records from the Web of Science Core Collection were manually screened. Bibliometric analysis, keyword co-occurrence analysis, a region–hazard matrix, and a BERTopic-inspired topic modelling procedure were then used to identify publication trends, disciplinary sources, spatial hazard patterns, and latent themes. The results show accelerated growth after 2020 and identify six interrelated themes: risk perception and preparedness; evacuation and shelter accessibility; urban flooding vulnerability; typhoon, storm surge, and coastal community risk; community resilience and climate adaptation governance; and health emergency response and psychosocial resilience. The review synthesises these findings into a heuristic framework linking risk information, cognitive appraisal, response action, and community resilience. The GBA is treated as an analytically informative, rather than statistically representative, case of a high-density, coastal, and multi-jurisdictional urban region. The findings suggest that resident-centred resilience planning should connect trusted and actionable warnings with inclusive digital communication, accessible protective resources, and cross-boundary coordination for compound hazards.

Urban Science doi: 10.3390/urbansci10080425

Authors: Meiyun Huang Zhiwen Deng Lingyan Chen Yushan Zheng

Urban parks can mitigate residents’ mental health risks. Although bamboo landscapes are widespread in Chinese parks, evidence for their stress-relief benefits remains limited, and current evaluation media are constrained. This study assessed the feasibility of virtual reality 180° (VR180) for landscape evaluation and examined the stress-relief benefits of bamboo landscapes in urban parks. A pilot study (n = 232) compared perceptual realism and psychological perception across four presentation modes (on-site scene, binocular 3D video, binocular 3D photograph, and two-dimensional photograph). A main experiment (n = 280) examined the stress-relief benefits of six bamboo landscape types (bamboo–terrain, bamboo–architecture, bamboo–environmental furniture, bamboo–pavement, bamboo–water, and bamboo–plant landscapes) using pre- and post-viewing changes in skin conductance level (SCL), heart rate variability indices, including high-frequency power (HF) and the LF/HF (low-frequency/high-frequency) ratio, and systolic and diastolic blood pressure (SBP and DBP), with urban block landscapes as the control. VR180 outperformed two-dimensional photographs in perceptual realism and psychological perception and showed relatively high substitutability for on-site evaluation, with binocular 3D videos performing better than binocular 3D photographs. Urban park bamboo landscapes generally elicited stress-relief benefits, whereas urban block landscapes showed the opposite pattern. Bamboo–water and bamboo–plant landscapes showed the most favorable overall responses, with bamboo–water ranking higher, whereas bamboo–pavement ranked lowest. Overall, bamboo landscapes combined with naturalized elements tended to produce more favorable stress-relief responses, while hard elements may partly influence these benefits through cultural expression. This study provides a methodological option for landscape evaluation in small-scale scenes and offers physiological evidence for understanding the health value of urban park bamboo landscapes.

Urban Science doi: 10.3390/urbansci10080424

Authors: Heba Z. Nusair Mintai Kim

This study examines correlates of preferred future work arrangements among adult residents of the Roanoke Metropolitan Statistical Area, Virginia, a mid-sized U.S. metropolitan region. It focuses on whether remote-work preference varies by sociodemographic characteristics, pandemic-era work-from-home experience, occupational perceptions, and attitudes toward physical interaction. Data were collected through a cross-sectional online survey administered in 2023, during the post-acute pandemic period. After excluding incomplete responses, duplicates, respondents younger than 18 years, cases without verifiable adult eligibility, and cases without verified residence in the study area, the final analytical sample included 636 respondents. Analyses included chi-square tests, Spearman rank correlations, a Stuart–Maxwell test of marginal homogeneity, and an adjusted multinomial logistic regression model. Among respondents with valid preference data in this nonprobability analytical sample, 63.8% preferred fully remote work. Among paired current–preferred cases, preferred arrangements differed significantly from current arrangements, with 87.0% of respondents reporting a directional change preferring movement toward a more remote arrangement. Preferred future work arrangement was significantly associated with age, education, earnings, marital status, housing tenure, perceived work-from-home efficiency, occupational remote-work perceptions, and physical-interaction importance; gender was not significant. Findings indicate substantial but socially differentiated remote-work preference, with implications for workforce planning in mid-sized metropolitan regions.

Urban Science doi: 10.3390/urbansci10080423

Authors: Alberto Rodríguez-Barcón

Over the last two decades, touristification has become one of the most influential concepts for understanding the relationship between tourism and urban change. However, existing research remains strongly shaped by the experiences of large metropolitan areas and globally recognized tourist destinations, leaving intermediate urban contexts comparatively underexplored. This paper addresses this gap by examining the Atlantic Urban System of the north-western Iberian Peninsula as a framework for understanding touristification beyond dominant metropolitan paradigms. Drawing on debates on touristification, ordinary cities, intermediate urbanism, and regional development, the article argues that the polycentric structure, historical peripherality, and growing integration of this urban system create distinctive conditions shaping tourism-related urban change. Building on previous work on the Atlantic Urban Axis, the paper conceptualizes the Atlantic Urban System as a territorial configuration composed largely of interconnected intermediate cities and develops a framework for analysing touristification through five interrelated dimensions: territorial position, housing market structure, tourism development trajectories, urban governance, and urban form. Rather than proposing a new urban type, the article highlights the analytical value of examining tourism-related transformations within a specific territorial configuration and contributes to ongoing efforts to diversify the geographical foundations of urban theory.

Urban Science doi: 10.3390/urbansci10080422

Authors: Robert William Pendergrass

Wrong Citation [...]

Urban Science doi: 10.3390/urbansci10070421

Authors: Khoren Mkhitaryan Sergey Aslanyan Gor Harutyunyan Erika Kirakosyan

The accelerating digital transformation of urban economies is reshaping labor markets at unprecedented speed, generating skills mismatches, employment volatility, and widening inclusion gaps that current smart city governance frameworks are insufficiently equipped to address. While the smart city literature has advanced substantially in the areas of digital infrastructure, mobility, and e-government services, the governance of labor market transitions in data-driven urban environments remains conceptually underdeveloped. In particular, no integrated analytical framework currently links smart city governance, labor market intelligence, and workforce resilience into a coherent tool for assessing urban preparedness for technology-driven employment change. This study addresses that gap by developing the Urban Workforce Readiness Framework (UWRF)—an integrated conceptual model designed to evaluate how prepared urban labor markets are for accelerating digital and technological transformation. Methodologically, the framework is constructed through a structured synthesis of peer-reviewed scholarship published between 2015 and 2025 across five domains—smart city governance, labor market regulation, human capital development, workforce resilience, and data-driven public administration—complemented by a thematic review of policy documents issued by the OECD, ILO, European Commission, and World Bank. On this basis, the UWRF identifies five interdependent dimensions of urban workforce readiness: (i) digital infrastructure capacity, (ii) labor market intelligence and analytics, (iii) workforce skills adaptability, (iv) institutional governance capacity, and (v) social inclusion mechanisms. A multi-criteria operationalization is proposed, enabling comparative diagnostic assessment across cities and supporting evidence-based prioritization of policy interventions. The analysis demonstrates that institutional governance capacity and real-time labor market intelligence function as critical mediators within the system: in their absence, even substantial investments in digital infrastructure fail to produce resilient, inclusive, or sustainable labor market outcomes. Theoretically, the study extends data-driven governance scholarship beyond service delivery into the domain of workforce management, thereby integrating three traditionally separate research streams—smart city studies, labor market governance, and digital public administration—under a single analytical architecture. Practically, the UWRF provides policymakers, municipal authorities, labor market institutions, and urban planners with a structured diagnostic instrument for aligning digital transformation strategies with sustainable and equitable employment outcomes, and offers a replicable foundation for future empirical validation across diverse urban contexts.

Urban Science doi: 10.3390/urbansci10070420

Authors: Dillip Kumar Das

Although smart city strategies increasingly employ emerging technologies to improve urban services, existing research often treats these technologies in isolation from broader socio-technical systems. Similarly, urban resilience scholarship conceptualises cities as complex adaptive systems but rarely integrates digital infrastructure into formal resilience frameworks. This study examined how digital technologies can be holistically integrated into urban systems to support sustainable, adaptive, and resilient smart cities. It also developed a systems-thinking–based framework to guide the governance and design of inclusive and environmentally responsive urban systems. The study was conducted using a qualitative multi-method approach combining literature review and comparative case analysis of digitally advanced cities, including Singapore, Amsterdam, Wuhan, Copenhagen, Barcelona, and cities in Karnataka, India. The findings indicate that resilience depends less on the scale of technological deployment and more on the integration of digital infrastructure with adaptive governance, interoperability, and citizen participation. Drawing on systems thinking and system dynamics, the study proposes a digital feedback framework in which reinforcing loops enhance sensing, decision intelligence, inclusivity, and sustainability, while balancing loops that regulate risks related to privacy, inequality, technological lock-in, and environmental rebound effects. The study contributes a systems-based framework linking smart city development with adaptive urban resilience.

Urban Science doi: 10.3390/urbansci10070419

Authors: Alan G. Phipps Wen Jiang

Social and economic satisfaction gaps are theoretical differences between a resident’s socially or monetarily most preferred affordable home attributes and the actual attributes of their current home. In this study, the satisfaction gaps of two samples of respondents are predicted with their social utility data for preferred attributes in 1987 and 2020, in conjunction with the asking or sale prices and comparable attributes of single detached or similar homes merged with small-area census data for periods up to those dates. Average social and economic gaps of less than 20% affirm respondents’ overall satisfaction with their current homes, most of whom were recent movers. However, wider social satisfaction gaps among the minority of residents may reflect dissatisfaction with new suburban locations in one sample and older inner city housing in the other. Four practical and theoretical contributions of the utility modelling of residential satisfaction gaps in objective and subjective home attributes, as opposed to direct surveying of residential satisfaction, are concluded.

Urban Science doi: 10.3390/urbansci10070418

Authors: Sanja Obradović Strålman Vladimir Stojanović Nikola Milentijević

Achieving Sustainable Development Goal 11 requires active engagement of local communities in environmental protection and sustainable urban development. Although residents play a critical role in supporting sustainability initiatives, limited research has examined how community-related factors shape environmental attitudes, environmental engagement, and support for sustainable behaviour in urban tourism destinations. This study investigates the relationships among destination social responsibility, community attachment, community involvement, environmental attitudes, community environmental participation, environmental advocacy and action, perceived environmental benefits, and support for sustainable behaviour among residents of Novi Sad, Serbia. Data were collected from 1038 residents and analyzed using structural equation modeling. The results show that community attachment positively influences environmental attitudes and support for sustainable behaviour, while community involvement enhances community environmental participation and environmental advocacy and action. Environmental attitudes positively affect community environmental participation, environmental advocacy and action, and perceived environmental benefits. Perceived environmental benefits, in turn, strengthen support for sustainable behaviour. Conversely, destination social responsibility does not significantly influence community attachment or community involvement. The findings highlight the importance of strengthening residents’ attachment to their community, encouraging participation in local affairs, and fostering positive environmental attitudes to promote sustainable urban development. The study contributes to sustainable urban tourism research by identifying key social and psychological mechanisms that encourage environmental engagement and support for sustainability-oriented behaviour.

Urban Science doi: 10.3390/urbansci10070417

Authors: Galina Segarra-Morales

This study examines the urban–rural interface of Loja, Ecuador, as a differentiated socio-ecological system shaped by environmental structure, the persistence of productive land, reliance on infrastructure, and terrain-adaptive settlement patterns. An integrated territorial taxonomy was developed using a four-phase methodological framework that combined morphological analysis, socio-territorial characterization, adaptive tectonic interpretation, and multivariate synthesis. Ten representative polygons located within Loja’s Andean periphery were evaluated using indicators of Biotic Porosity (BP), Degree of Hybridity (DH), Infrastructure Dependency (ID), and Alimentary Autonomy Extent (AAE), complemented by spatial analysis, field verification, and exploratory correlation assessment. The results revealed strong positive associations between socio-territorial hybridity and alimentary autonomy (ρ = 0.92), and strong negative associations between hybridity and infrastructure dependency (ρ = −0.88). A moderate positive relationship was identified between biotic porosity and hybridity (ρ = 0.67). The analysis also identified three adaptive tectonic typologies—Terracing, Cantilever, and Platform Urbanization—and a territorial taxonomy composed of Resilient, Adaptive, and Consolidating Edges. These findings demonstrate that the Andean urban periphery operates as a heterogeneous continuum rather than a homogeneous expansion zone. Although the statistical relationships should be interpreted as exploratory due to the limited sample size, the framework provides a useful basis for comparative research and resilience-oriented planning in intermediate mountain cities undergoing rapid territorial transformation.

Urban Science doi: 10.3390/urbansci10070416

Authors: Andrei Crisan Sorin Herban Massimiliano Pepe Jan Karlshøj Valerio Baiocchi Bogdan Runceanu

Digital Twins (DT) are increasingly positioned as key enablers of sustainable urban development, yet many implementations remain fragmented, technology-driven, and weakly connected to clearly defined decision-making needs. The present study develops a structured information governance framework for DTs, drawing on the principles of ISO 19650. The framework establishes a traceable hierarchy linking organizational objectives, DT use cases, information requirements, the Level of Information Need, information exchange processes and machine-readable Information Delivery Specifications. Its purpose is to ensure that information is clearly defined, exchanged, validated, and maintained in a consistent and verifiable manner before it is used for monitoring, simulation, predictive analytics, or decision support. The proposal is illustrated through an urban air-quality Digital Shadow demonstrator integrating BIM, GIS, weather services, and a real-time visualization environment. Candidate information-quality indicators are also introduced and demonstrated through synthetic calculations intended to explain their application. Neither the demonstrator nor the calculated KPI values constitute validation of the framework or evidence of improved operational performance. Instead, they establish a structured basis for future testing in operational Urban Digital Twin (UDT) implementations. The contribution lies in integrating established BIM concepts into a single DT-oriented traceability chain rather than introducing them as new standards or methods.

Urban Science doi: 10.3390/urbansci10070415

Authors: Aimar Santos-Garcia Izaskun Aseguinolaza Braga Nagore Urrutia del Campo

This article advances the understanding of urban spaces that enable the emergence of “life between buildings”, understood as South European environments capable of supporting care, social interaction, and community life. The study focuses on in-between spaces, defined as spatial realms located between the private sphere of the dwelling and the public sphere of the city, and characterized by both physical and social dimensions. Specifically, the article addresses the quantitative assessment of their social dimension by developing an objective model to identify the degree of in-between character present in urban space. The proposed model comprises two complementary stages. The first consists of an activity-mapping methodology designed to record the social and use-related characteristics that define in-between spaces. The second establishes a set of indicators that determine the in-between character of each space on the basis of the data collected through this mapping process. By measuring the level of in-between character, the model helps identify the types of urban settings in which relationships that strengthen community life are generated. This knowledge can support spatial planning strategies aimed at producing appropriate privacy gradients and improving existing residential environments through a more suitable provision of public space and enhancing the everyday habitability of nearby urban fabrics.

Urban Science doi: 10.3390/urbansci10070414

Authors: Carla Scott-Florence

Urban surveillance infrastructure is a form of public service deployment subject to the same equity standards as other spatially distributed urban systems. This study examines the geographic distribution of body-worn camera (BWC)-equipped officer density produced by the Metropolitan Police Department’s (MPD) 2015–2017 randomized controlled trial across Washington, D.C.’s eight wards, asking whether a formally neutral police technology deployment produced unequal per-capita densities across the city’s racially and socioeconomically stratified urban landscape. Using officer-level BWC assignment data drawn from the trail’s publicly available replication files, aggregated from police districts to wards through a population-weighted spatial crosswalk, the analysis compares BWC-equipped officer density between majority-Black, east-of-Anacostia Wards 7–8 and majority-White, northwest Wards 2–3, and tests associations with ward-level demographic and socioeconomic indicators. Cameras were assigned to officers at an essentially constant rate across districts (approximately 50%), so ward-level variation in density reflects the underlying distribution of officers rather than the camera-assignment mechanism. Descriptively, Wards 7–8 showed a modestly higher mean density than Wards 2–3 (3.31 vs. 3.15 BWC-equipped officers per 1000 residents; a difference of approximately 5%), but the comparison did not reach statistical significance, and ward-level density was uncorrelated with the percentage of Black residents (r = 0.008). These inferential results are statistically inconclusive given the small number of geographic units rather than affirmative evidence of equitable distribution. A more direct secondary measure BWC activations (recordings) per capita shows a modestly larger focal-ward gap (approximately 11%) that is likewise non-significant and uncorrelated with racial composition (r = 0.05). This convergence corroborates rather than overturns the primary measure, indicating that the null is not an artifact of how exposure is operationalized. The findings are interpreted as exploratory and descriptive: officers and therefore cameras were not distributed in proportion to residential population, which locates any equity concern upstream in deployment intensity rather than in the camera technology itself and motivates spatially explicit equity monitoring as a component of sustainable urban governance.

Urban Science doi: 10.3390/urbansci10070413

Authors: Vladan Varićak Dejan Ecet Saša Medić Jelena Atanacković Jeličić

Technologies such as cellular automata, genetic algorithms, and artificial intelligence have greatly expanded the range of possible architectural and urban solutions. The challenge is no longer only how to generate form, but how to interpret, evaluate, and select among multiple outcomes produced within computationally open-ended systems. When such generated alternatives are understood as collections, selection can be approached as a curatorial act. This article introduces the concept of algo-scapes: potentially extensive algorithmic landscapes whose meaning emerges only through processes of human discernment, comparison, and choice. To examine the broader logic of such selection, the study adopts a two-phase comparative design based on two parallel surveys. In the first phase, responses from 32 collectors of material objects are used to examine how collections are expanded and evaluated under conditions of differentiation, coherence, and spatial limitation. In the second phase, responses from 50 architects, urban planners, and interior designers are analyzed in order to determine whether analogous patterns can be identified in the ways spatial systems are developed, modified, and brought to temporary states of completion. The findings suggest that the strongest similarity between the two domains lies not in identical criteria of evaluation, but in a shared structure of selective growth based on addition, differentiation, limitation, and temporary completeness. While collectors place greater emphasis on uniqueness, aesthetic value, and personal attachment, architects, urban planners, and interior designers prioritize systemic fit, improvement, and contextual coherence. The article argues that the logic of collection can serve as a useful interpretive model for understanding architectural, urban, and algorithmic design systems, provided that it is understood structurally rather than literally. In this sense, algo-scapes are not meaningful simply because they can generate many alternatives, but because they require meta-level criteria through which meaningful configurations can be selected from potentially open-ended fields of possibility.

Urban Science doi: 10.3390/urbansci10070412

Authors: Michal Loman Veronika Harantová Saša Milojević

Enclosed transport environments are becoming an integral part of compact urban structures; however, their air quality is monitored less systematically than that of the outdoor urban environment. This study evaluates particulate matter concentrations (PM1, PM2.5, PM10) in two urban microenvironments in Banská Bystrica (Slovakia): an underground parking garage (representing private urban mobility) and an underground bus station (representing public transport). Continuous measurements using an enviDUST monitoring device were analysed in relation to occupancy rates and transport intensity. The results showed a dominance of the PM10 fraction in both environments, suggesting the importance of non-exhaust sources and dust resuspension in enclosed urban transport spaces. In the parking facility, the immediate relationship between occupancy and PM concentrations was weak; however, a time lag effect was observed, indicating particle accumulation. The bus station exhibited higher average concentrations (PM1: 8.67; PM2.5: 14.12; PM10: 34.12 µg/m3), while peak levels during nighttime highlighted the critical role of air stagnation and ventilation regimes. The study emphasizes the need to perceive such transport nodes as semi-public urban spaces requiring the integration of intelligent air quality management within sustainable urban development.

Urban Science doi: 10.3390/urbansci10070411

Authors: Haruhiko Fujisaki Akira Nagamatsu

This paper presents a descriptive and exploratory analysis of temporal mismatch between Comprehensive Management Plans for Public Facilities (PFMPs) and other municipal management plans, and of the positioning of population assumptions against a common external benchmark, focusing on Japan’s 20 ordinance-designated cities. Using the PFMP as the reference plan, Mismatch Years and Mismatch Ratio are treated as risk indicators of potential coordination exposure, while DOG (annualised) is used as the primary indicator of demographic assumption positioning. Descriptive tabulations show that the average PFMP duration (20.80 years) exceeded those of the Basic Plan (10.00 years), Fiscal Vision (7.65 years), Administrative Management Policy (7.95 years), and Implementation Plan (4.30 years). Most cities projected population decline, although assumed levels varied considerably. Spearman correlations between DOG (annualised) and Mismatch Ratio were weakly negative for the Basic Plan, Fiscal Vision, and Administrative Management Policy, with no clear positive monotonic co-movement. These results suggest that temporal mismatch and demographic assumption positioning are analytically distinct governance dimensions. Policy implications include synchronising PFMP reviews with medium-term fiscal and administrative cycles, rechecking demographic assumptions against a common external benchmark, and stress-testing PFMP assumptions across multiple crisis scenarios.

Urban Science doi: 10.3390/urbansci10070410

Authors: Pedro Chamusca

This article examines the relationship between tourism dynamics and housing systems in large urban municipalities, combining three complementary analytical dimensions: statistical indicators, correlation analysis, and resident survey data. The study explores how tourism growth, platform-mediated accommodation, and real estate pressures interact with housing affordability and availability. By triangulating municipal statistical indicators and residents’ perceptions, the article contributes to current debates on touristification, housing assetisation, and platform urbanism. The findings suggest that tourism–housing pressures are multidimensional and uneven, requiring integrated regulatory and planning responses that address both supply constraints and demand-side transformations linked to tourism economies.

Urban Science doi: 10.3390/urbansci10070409

Authors: Rajjan Man Chitrakar

Public space is an essential component of urban life, serving as a common platform for social interaction, cultural expression, and everyday urban experience [...]

Urban Science doi: 10.3390/urbansci10070408

Authors: Yasmany García-Ramírez Vera Bijelić

Urban heat and walkability are often assessed separately, although pedestrians experience street connectivity, topography, vegetation, and thermal exposure simultaneously. This study develops a reproducible open-data workflow to examine the spatial relationship between walkability potential and surface thermal pressure in Loja, Ecuador, an intermediate Andean city shaped by valley morphology, steep slopes, uneven urban expansion, and heterogeneous green-space distribution. The analysis combines Landsat-derived land surface temperature, OpenStreetMap urban-form indicators, DEM-derived slope, composite spatial indicators, and spatial autocorrelation across 100 m, 250 m, and 500 m grids. The results show that walkability potential, observed LST-based heat intensity, and walkability–heat balance is spatially structured rather than randomly distributed. At the 250 m scale, heat-intensity clusters were spatially selective, indicating that surface thermal pressure is concentrated in specific parts of the retained analytical grid rather than uniformly distributed across the city. The 250 m grid provided the most interpretable balance between local detail and spatial stability for this case study, while the 100 m and 500 m grids revealed the sensitivity of the results to spatial aggregation. The study does not measure physiological thermal comfort or pedestrian heat stress. Instead, it offers an exploratory diagnostic framework for identifying where pedestrian-supportive urban form and surface thermal pressure overlap or diverge. This approach can help data-constrained intermediate cities prioritize areas for field verification, shade assessment, green-infrastructure planning, and more detailed pedestrian-level thermal studies.

Urban Science doi: 10.3390/urbansci10070407

Authors: Lydia H. Maliti Issakwisa B. Ngondya Linus K. Munishi

Urban greenbelts are vital for biodiversity and ecosystem services but face threats from urban expansion. This study assessed the population structure and identified potential threats to woody plants in Arusha city’s greenbelts (nature areas and riparian forests). Woody plants were sampled across 53 grid cells (200 m × 200 m) using stratified random sampling and the Braun-Blanquet relief method. Remote sensing processed 2015 and 2022 satellite images. ArcGIS 10.8.2 software facilitated field data collection coordinates, the satellite imageries and spatial analyses. Standard plot sizes of 400 m2 were systematically selected for data collection. Significant differences in tree species diversity and abundance were observed within nature areas (t = 18.6, p = 0.001; t = 5.48, p = 0.001) and riparian forests (t = 21.4, p = 0.001; t = 13.8, p = 0.001). No significant differences were found between eastern and western nature areas (t = 1.06, p = 0.338; t = −1.55, p = 0.181) while within riparian forests, only species diversity differed significantly (t = 2.66, p = 0.011). However, tree species abundance differed significantly between nature areas and riparian forests (t = −2.97, p = 0.01) with riparian forests having higher abundance of native trees compared to nature areas and with significant abundance of native trees compared to non-native trees (t = 14, p = 0.001). These findings emphasize the conservation of Arusha’s greenbelts, aligning with SDGs 3 (well-being), 6 (water quality), 11 (sustainable cities) and 15 (ecosystem conservation).

Urban Science doi: 10.3390/urbansci10070406

Authors: Mihnea Cristian Popa Diana Stoica Daniel Constantin Diaconu Daniel Peptenatu

The proliferation of gambling infrastructure within the urban environment has emerged as a significant public health concern, particularly in contexts where commercial interests intersect with the socio-economic vulnerability of resident populations. The paper investigates the spatial distribution of slot-machine gambling venues across important Romanian cities, testing the hypothesis of predatory placement. Utilizing February 2026 official licensing data from the National Office for Gambling (ONJN) and Geographic Information Systems (GIS), the research conducts a comprehensive geospatial accessibility analysis relative to sensitive community infrastructures. These include educational institutions, healthcare facilities, and religious sites, alongside socio-economically vulnerable residential zones. The methodology integrates network-based isochrone analysis, spatial density mapping, and proximity modeling to quantify effective accessibility within defined spatial ranges. These techniques identify high-exposure zones where dense gambling clusters intersect with protected institutional environments and marginalized populations. Results indicate a statistically significant spatial correlation between venue density and the immediate proximity of these sensitive community facilities. Furthermore, the findings provide a spatial evidence base for recent legislative shifts which empower local authorities to implement localized bans on physical gambling venues. Ultimately, this research illustrates how venue accessibility fosters urban risk landscapes, suggesting that local spatial autonomy is an essential pillar in mitigating gambling-related social harm.

Urban Science doi: 10.3390/urbansci10070405

Authors: Yifan Zhao Guoqiang Xu Yutian Gan Guo Li

Courtyard enclosure form and façade orientation are associated with near-wall microclimatic fluctuation and autumn façade-greening dynamics. This exploratory study monitored Boston ivy at six sample points in two-sided, three-sided, and four-sided enclosures with south-, west-, and north-facing façades. Near-wall temperature and relative humidity were recorded every 5 min, and fixed-ROI time-series imagery quantified leaf color change and defoliation. Mean thermal–humidity conditions varied modestly; daily temperature range varied from 8.79 ± 2.35 to 17.90 ± 7.21 °C and daily relative humidity range from 18.46 ± 4.59% to 29.81 ± 7.38%. DI50 occurred from 20 October to 1 November and DI80 from 6 to 25 November. Spearman analysis of 60 matched daily observations showed stronger associations of mean thermal–humidity indicators than fluctuation indicators with phenological indicators. RMedian correlated positively with LCR (ρ = 0.70), while DI correlated negatively with RMedian and Color Index (ρ = −0.50 and −0.53). Because enclosure form and façade orientation were partly coupled, their effects could not be separated. Overall, sample points differed more clearly in thermal–humidity fluctuation than in mean conditions, while phenological differences reflected enclosure form, façade orientation, near-wall thermal–humidity conditions, and exposure conditions.

Urban Science doi: 10.3390/urbansci10070403

Authors: Yutaka Iwasaki Takuro Kobashi Yukari Fuchigami Keishiro Hara

Achieving carbon neutrality toward 2050 requires not only the adoption of renewable energy technologies but also long-term planning based on their gradual integration into urban systems. This study presents a novel scenario-based framework that quantifies year-by-year impacts of deploying rooftop photovoltaics (PVs), electric vehicles (EVs), and Vehicle to Home (V2H) systems from 2018 through 2050. Five key dimensions are assessed: CO2 emission reduction, cost savings, self-consumption, energy sufficiency, and self-sufficiency. Using Suita City, Japan, as a case study, we analyzed two diffusion scenarios, “baseline (current growth case)” and “accelerated deployment case”. The results indicate that despite high initial investment, an accelerated scenario can achieve up to a 60% CO2 emission reduction and over 25% cost savings by 2050. Importantly, the integrated deployment of PVs, EVs, and V2H surpasses PV-only systems in overall effectiveness from around 2035 onward. By capturing the dynamic evolution of technology impacts over time, this study provides unique and actionable insights for designing data-driven policies supporting long-term urban decarbonization.

Urban Science doi: 10.3390/urbansci10070404

Authors: Ahyahudin Sodri Mauliza Fatwa Yusdian Haruki Agustina Nuraeni Nuraeni Riska Nur Azizah

The increasing frequency of climate change and extreme weather makes the issue of urban flood vulnerability an important one. Flood disaster mitigation efforts have progressed rapidly with the utilization of technology in flood risk assessment and community preparedness. However, there is still a gap between technology and community engagement in preparedness. This study was conducted to analyze the trend of technology-based urban flood vulnerability and community preparedness integration. The study used bibliometric methods to see research trends and a systematic review of Scopus data with Biblioshiny, VOSviewer, and Convidence to identify relevant research articles. Trends in urban flood vulnerability show an increasing use of advanced technologies such as multivariate LSTM (Long Short-Term Memory) artificial neural networks, LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging), GIS (Geographic Information System), and blockchain for flood risk assessment. There are gaps in community engagement and preparedness, highlighting the need for a comprehensive approach that combines technology with community-based strategies. A balance between technology implementation and community engagement is needed to improve community preparedness and safeguard water security in flood-prone urban areas. The development of an urban flood vulnerability index can bridge the technology gap with standardized community engagement. All the articles in the study contribute greatly to the changes and improvements in flood disaster mitigation, as well as to the role of technology and preparedness. The gap between technology and community engagement in preparedness requires an urban flood vulnerability index with comprehensive strategies.

Urban Science doi: 10.3390/urbansci10070402

Authors: Yan Gu Yifei Hou Yudie Zhang Ruoxi Zhang Lemin Zhang

Innovation-oriented productive forces are increasingly concentrated in cities, but the multiscale mechanisms through which the built environment shapes these forces remain insufficiently understood. This study develops a spatial analytical framework linking firm-level new quality productive forces (NQPF) to fine-grained urban spatial structures. Using 89 A-share listed firms in the Xiamen–Zhangzhou–Quanzhou (XZQ) urban agglomeration, we first construct an entropy-weighted NQPF index from eleven financial indicators related to R&D human capital, advanced capital stock, intangible assets, and operational efficiency. Kernel density estimation is then used to transform discrete firm-level NQPF values into a continuous 600 m × 600 m grid surface as the dependent variable. On the explanatory side, 27 built-environment variables are organized into an integrated indicator system covering urban form, natural conditions, jobs–housing structure, and service infrastructures. We combine cross-validated recursive feature elimination (RFE-CV) with multiscale geographically weighted regression (MGWR) to construct two model specifications: a 7-variable parsimonious subset and a 14-variable highest-performing subset. This dual-subset design allows us to distinguish core structural drivers from more context-dependent spatial mechanisms. The results reveal three mechanisms. First, ecological adaptation reflects the scale-dependent enabling and constraining effects of infrastructure and natural-foundation variables. Second, structural coordination shows that mature cores may experience crowding-related suppression when functional and institutional resources become spatially mismatched. Third, boundary activation indicates that transport, public-service, and leisure-related facilities can activate peripheral and cross-jurisdictional interface zones when supported by network connectivity and institutional coordination. By coupling variable-specific bandwidths with local coefficients, this study advances the analysis of spatial heterogeneity and provides evidence for differentiated, innovation-oriented urban regeneration.

Urban Science doi: 10.3390/urbansci10070401

Authors: Nijolė Batarlienė Inesa Pevcevič

This study investigates the key drivers and barriers influencing the adoption of electric vehicles (EVs) in urban freight logistics, using Lithuania as a case study. An integrated methodological framework combining Delphi, Fuzzy logic, DEMATEL, and System Dynamics is applied to identify critical factors and analyse their interdependencies. Four main drivers are identified: infrastructure, acquisition costs, technological development, and policy measures. Expert evaluations are transformed into fuzzy values to quantify factor importance, which are then incorporated into a dynamic simulation model to assess EV adoption and CO2 emission trends. In addition to baseline scenarios, extreme scenario analysis is conducted to evaluate system sensitivity to economic, technological, and policy changes. The results reveal strong nonlinear relationships between factors and highlight the importance of their balanced development. The findings suggest that rapid EV adoption in urban logistics requires a coordinated approach integrating infrastructure expansion, financial incentives, technological progress, and policy support. The study provides practical insights for policymakers and logistics companies aiming to accelerate sustainable urban transport transitions.

Urban Science doi: 10.3390/urbansci10070400

Authors: Francesco La Vigna Saverio Romeo Mauro Bonasera Maria Paola Campolunghi Gianluigi Di Paola Paolo Maria Guarino Gabriele Leoni Raffaele Proietti

Urban areas are increasingly affected by geological and climate-driven processes that influence their safety, functionality, and long-term resilience. Conventional sustainability indicators mainly focus on anthropogenic impacts on the environment, while the role of subsurface conditions and physical processes shaping urban vulnerability remains underrepresented. To address this gap, the Urban Geo-climate Footprint (UGF) introduced an inverse perspective, assessing how geological and climatic factors exert pressure on urban systems. The methodology is based on the classification of geological effects into five drivers: Geology, Deep Geological Processes, Surface Processes, Exogenous and Climatic Processes, and Subsurface Anthropogenic Pressure. These drivers, within the proposed framework, are articulated into 22 parameters evaluated using public datasets and expert judgment. These parameters are combined into a synthetic, standardised, reproducible and comparable index, the UGF Score Index (UGF-SI), ranging from 0 to >500 which enables direct comparison across cities and contexts. The application to 21 Italian cities highlights distinct spatial patterns, dominant drivers, and groups of cities facing similar geo-climatic challenges. The UGF framework constitutes a significant advancement in urban geoscience, supporting urban planning, risk awareness, and climate adaptation strategies by enhancing the understanding of subsurface-related pressures and promoting informed decision making.

Urban Science doi: 10.3390/urbansci10070399

Authors: Melania Petrea Carmen Gheorghe Adrian Soica

Accessibility in bus-based public transport is essential for inclusive and sustainable urban mobility, yet bus stops and stations are often overlooked compared with vehicle modernization and network planning. This study presents a bibliometric and thematic review of research (2020–2026) on accessibility in bus stop and station infrastructure across European cities. Literature indexed in the Web of Science Core Collection was analyzed using thematic synthesis supported by bibliometric network analysis. A total of 685 publications were examined to identify research trends, barriers, regional differences, assessment methods, and planning implications. The findings show that accessibility is a multidimensional concept shaped by physical design, information systems, user experience, first- and last-mile connectivity, and governance capacity. Persistent barriers include poor boarding interfaces, inadequate maintenance, weak wayfinding, safety concerns, and uneven implementation of accessibility standards. The reviewed studies suggest that evidence of stronger integration and higher user satisfaction is more frequently reported in Northern and some Western European contexts, whereas rural and smaller cities often face lower service accessibility. Emerging topics include real-time passenger information, crowding management, electric buses, and smart mobility technologies. The review concludes that bus stops and stations should be treated as strategic mobility assets. Integrated planning, participatory design, and territorially differentiated policy support are essential to advance inclusive bus-based public transport across Europe.

Urban Science doi: 10.3390/urbansci10070398

Authors: Hanseon Joo Ook Lee

Urban flood detection requires visual examples of flooded streets and alleys, but such event-state images are difficult to collect at scale. This study examines whether sparse real-image training sets can be strengthened using text-prompt-only AI-generated virtual imagery for ground-level flood detection in flood-prone urban areas. Building on AlleyFloodNet, the generated images were used only as condition-specific training augmentation, while validation and testing were conducted exclusively on real images. Across eight ImageNet-pretrained architectures and three random seeds, the results show that virtual imagery is not a substitute for real flood observations. When virtual images dominated the training set, performance declined. However, when a sufficient real-image anchor was available, virtual augmentation improved the highest observed fixed-test performance. The strongest mixed-condition result was obtained by EfficientNet-B2 under Real30_Aug70, reaching 91.00% accuracy, 89.48% flooded-class recall, and 90.79% macro-F1. These findings suggest that prompt-only virtual imagery can help mitigate real-image scarcity in selected training conditions, but its benefit depends on the real-to-virtual composition and model architecture.

Urban Science doi: 10.3390/urbansci10070397

Authors: Chengcheng Wang Jia Li Chenxi Li Yunfan Zhang Yufeng Bi Zetao Wei Wenhui Dong Qiang Fu

To validate the validity of a driving simulation platform, this study constructs a dual dataset using field data and driving simulation experiments on an urban arterial road. Comprehensive validation is conducted from both subjective perception and objective quantification perspectives. Subjectively, questionnaires assessed simulation fidelity, driving workload, and physiological symptoms. Objectively, five core car-following indicators (speed, acceleration, relative speed, headway, and time headway) were analyzed using dynamic time warping and statistical methods. The results demonstrate that the simulated scenarios exhibit high subjective fidelity, reasonable task loads, and controllable motion sickness risks. Objectively, dynamic time warping confirms strong temporal pattern similarity, with waveform consistency proportions across core indicators ranging from 91.67% to 100.0%. Macroscopically, satisfactory relative aggregate similarity is demonstrated, with relative difference between means consistently constrained within a 20% threshold. However, strict absolute behavioral validity is unsupported due to significant statistical differences in sequence means, establishing clear boundary constraints for trend replication. It is speculated that systematic biases are primarily related to differences in risk perception within virtual environments.

Urban Science doi: 10.3390/urbansci10070396

Authors: Bhuvana Nanaiah Dirk Ahlers

Innovation districts have emerged as a prominent urban strategy to catalyse knowledge-based development and economic growth. Yet their contribution to sustainability and an understanding of what they entail beyond economic growth remains underexplored. This paper proposes a conceptual framework rooted in urban monitoring to identify and synthesise the contributions of innovation districts (or similar development strategies) into the city’s sustainable development. Specifically, it targets the initial processes of intention and objective setting, where different and conflicting policies overlap to define definite city-level objectives. Using Oslo as a single embedded case study, the paper further proposes a methodology for identifying and localising urban sustainability indicators (USIs) based on the city’s three innovation districts: Oslo Science City, Hovinbyen Circular Oslo, and Punkt Oslo. This methodology integrates global frameworks, such as the UN Sustainable Development Goals and the Global Urban Monitoring Framework, with local priorities and stakeholder perspectives through a combined top-down and bottom-up approach. The process resulted in a set of 40 indicators across five sustainability domains—social, environmental, economic, cultural, and governance—revealing governance as a critical enabler for sustainable implementation. While most indicators stem from theoretical conceptions of innovation districts, governance indicators rather reflect local experiences and institutional dynamics.

Urban Science doi: 10.3390/urbansci10070395

Authors: Rana N. Jawarneh Madhavi Indraganti Sultana F. Al-Nabet Abdulrahman H. Al-Mana Aamna Azad

Urban heat intensification is an increasing concern in rapidly urbanizing arid cities, where extreme climatic conditions intersect with expansive urban growth. This study examines the spatiotemporal dynamics of urban thermal patterns in the Doha metropolitan region, Qatar, by integrating multi-season remote sensing with urban morphological analysis. Seasonal composites of land surface temperature (LST), Urban Heat Island (UHI) intensity, and Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) were derived from Landsat 8–9 Collection 2 Level-2 imagery across eight seasons from Spring 2024 to Winter 2026. Urban form was characterized using Local Climate Zones (LCZs) and quantified through class-level landscape metrics, i.e., Largest Patch Index (LPI), Number of Patches (NP), and CLUMPY. The results showed a pronounced seasonal variability, with LST ranging from approximately 12.5 °C in winter to 61.3 °C in summer, and intra-urban UHI exceeding 10 °C during peak conditions. The bare soil/sand, with relative coverage of 52.84% and LPI of 25.45%, and the large low-rise, with relative coverage of 38.60% and LPI of 14.70%, typologies dominate the landscape, forming highly aggregated spatial structures, while vegetation cover remained minimal. Weak negative relationships between NDVI and thermal indicators revealed that vegetation alone had limited explanatory power. In contrast, LCZ-based analysis revealed a better thermal differentiation across urban typologies, with compact forms associated with higher thermal intensities. These findings highlight the dominant role of urban morphology and spatial configuration in shaping thermal patterns and support the need for morphology-sensitive planning strategies in arid urban environments.

Urban Science doi: 10.3390/urbansci10070394

Authors: Juan Antonio Marco Montes De Oca Tomás García Martín Marta Serrano Pérez

Sustainability of urban logistics or last-mile logistics (LML) has been extensively studied from the perspective of experts and professionals whose objectives and interests have been closely linked to their organisations. For this reason, the conclusions drawn from these studies have had an inherent bias that is difficult to overlook. The aim of this study is to identify perceived research priorities in sustainable urban logistics through an innovative approach based on weightings established by a ‘university community’. To carry out this study, a hybrid multi-criteria model is proposed, used to weight twelve criteria employed to compare fourteen categories grouping the lines of research in LML. The main contributions of this work have therefore been: to provide an atypical perspective grounded in the ‘university community’, and to design a hybrid multi-criteria model capable of efficiently forecasting which perceived research priorities will be most relevant in the future in LML. The most significant conclusions of this study highlight the strong value that the ‘university community’ assigns to research areas in LML focused on collaborative workstreams among stakeholders. This is understood as a systemic and strategic approach grounded in the implementation of urban logistics infrastructures that enhance process efficiency through regulatory and collaborative mechanisms aimed at increasing the sustainability of LML.

Urban Science doi: 10.3390/urbansci10070393

Authors: Víctor M. Cantero Solís Fernando Vegas López-Manzanares Camilla Mileto Valentina Cristini Javier Orozco Messana

The 15 min city offers a framework for sustainable urban environments. However, its application in historic centres faces challenges such as tourist pressure and heritage fragility. This paper explores cultural heritage as a strategic resource for urban resilience within the European ENACT-15 mC project. The methodology applies four lines of research—socio-economic diagnosis, educational innovation, participatory action research, and digital tool implementation—to the historic centre of Valencia. The study involved 42 students from architecture, commerce and tourism programmes in documenting a selected sample of historic commercial establishments protected by the Special Protection Plan of Ciutat Vella (PEP 2020), while community workshops recruited 30 stakeholders representing local associations, businesses and heritage-related actors to analyse urban conflicts and functional transformation. Results show that integrating educational and participatory approaches facilitates the generation of situated knowledge and social co-responsibility. The technical documentation and diagnostic reports produced serve as empirical evidence of how heritage can be monitored and protected in urban settings under tension. The study concludes that cultural heritage provides a vital social infrastructure for building resilient communities. By bridging the gap between academic research and local agency through digital and participatory mapping, this integrated model provides adaptive intervention strategies that balance tourism demands with the preservation of everyday local life and the proximity economy in heritage-rich environments.

Urban Science doi: 10.3390/urbansci10070392

Authors: Xiaomeng Dong Tianyu Shen Qiwei Zhang Di Yang Xianfeng Yang Mansoureh Jeihani

Despite occupying essential roles in healthcare, warehouses, and manufacturing, night shift workers remain underserved by transportation systems designed around standard daytime schedules. Using the Baltimore Metropolitan Area as a case study, this study provides an in-depth examination of night shift workers’ travel behavior and commute wellbeing. Survey data on commute choices, commute durations, travel costs, and perceived perspectives were collected from workers employed in night shift-based occupations. Structural equation modeling was then used to examine the relationships between travel behavior and perceived inconvenience by constructing a latent variable of commute burden. The results show that longer commute times and reliance on public transit are significant indicators of commute burden among this population. To further investigate why commute burden is associated with public transit, we conducted spatial visualizations and K-means clustering based on origin-destination nighttime trips derived from anonymized mobile phone data. Land use maps and nighttime public transit networks were referenced to identify travel flows and mobility patterns between high-flow zones, revealing the need to expand nighttime transit services in those areas. These findings reflect limited transit accessibility affecting night shift workers and offer actionable insights for nighttime transit planning and public service improvements in similar metropolitan contexts.

Urban Science doi: 10.3390/urbansci10070391

Authors: Farnaz Eskandari Ahmad Khalili Mostafa Behzadfar Momen Foadmarashi Francisco Serdoura

Previous studies examining the link between urban health and land use have predominantly relied on qualitative or descriptive approaches, lacking comprehensive quantitative frameworks capable of systematically identifying influential factors and prioritizing interventions. This research introduces a multi-method analytical framework combining qualitative content analysis, Factor Analysis, and Importance–Performance Map Analysis (IPMA). In the first phase, MAXQDA was used to conduct qualitative content analysis and identify urban health indicators most influenced by land use. These indicators were assessed through a structured questionnaire comprising 41 items, distributed among residents of three neighborhood units within Phase 2 of Parand New Town, a rapidly growing planned settlement in the Tehran Metropolitan Area, with a minimum residency requirement of five years to ensure data reliability. Factor Analysis was employed to reduce the broader set of indicators into a smaller number of latent constructs, each reflecting a distinct dimension and forming the basis for the composite Urban Health Index. Subsequently, IPMA was applied to evaluate the importance and performance of each indicator within individual neighborhoods, enabling the identification of local intervention priorities. The findings show a substantial influence of the land use system on urban health. The second neighborhood unit, characterized by superior accessibility and a broader range of land uses, achieved the highest score of 3.062. This analytical framework offers urban planners a replicable and practical tool for identifying and prioritizing interventions that promote health-oriented and sustainable urban development.

Urban Science doi: 10.3390/urbansci10070390

Authors: Ismail Robbani Suwhan Yee Quang Hoai Le Yonghan Ahn

Urban Heat Islands (UHIs) intensify extreme heat, raise energy demand, and risk citizen thermal comfort in densely built cities. However, spatially detailed, scenario-differentiated estimates of future UHI intensity are still limited for complex coastal mountainous cities. This study set out to forecast UHI intensity variations in Busan, South Korea, under SSP2-4.5 and SSP5-8.5 scenarios. Daily temperatures from 19 automatic weather stations (2010–2014) were spatially interpolated using Empirical Bayesian Kriging Regression (EBKR), which included elevation and coastline distance variables. Among the 16 CMIP6 Global Climate Models (GCMs) tested, CNRM-CM6-1 (r = 0.902, RMSE = 4.937 °C) was chosen and bias-corrected using Empirical Quantile Mapping (EQM). The results reveal that mean maximum UHI intensity rises gradually, with ΔUHI (compared with the 2010–2014 baseline of 0.90 °C) reaching +7.03 °C (SSP2-4.5) and +9.60 °C (SSP5-8.5) in the far future, roughly 1.43 times more under the high-emission scenario. Summer through autumn has a UHI intensity increase, whereas long-term warming concentrates in Busan’s urban core. These findings inform targeted urban heat adaptation strategies, prioritizing green infrastructure, cool urban surfaces, and energy-resilient city planning to protect human well-being.

Urban Science doi: 10.3390/urbansci10070388

Authors: Miroslava Farkas Smitkova David Kompan Florinda F. Martins

Achieving climate neutrality by 2050 requires strategic shifts in national energy portfolios tailored to specific geographical and socio-political conditions. This study examines the divergent low-carbon trajectories of Portugal, characterized by variable renewable integration, and Slovakia, defined by a robust nuclear baseload, through the perspectives of STEM students who will lead the energy transition. The rationale for comparing these two countries lies in their contrasting low-carbon strategies, which provide a natural setting for examining how divergent national energy systems shape the attitudes of a technically educated cohort largely overlooked in previous research yet responsible for implementing the transition. Data were collected through an online survey (n = 133) at technical universities in Bratislava and Porto. Results indicate regional disparities in household energy mixes, notably higher wood burning in Slovakia (12%) than Portugal (<1%). Slovak respondents reported higher residential solar adoption (63.6% of solar users), possibly associated with higher homeownership (93%) and energy-crisis pressures, despite Portugal’s superior solar irradiance. Although limited by sample size, this pilot assessment shows that future engineers navigate trade-offs between sustainability and economic viability and view transition costs largely as a governmental responsibility. These findings inform the alignment of urban energy policies with the next generation’s readiness.

Urban Science doi: 10.3390/urbansci10070389

Authors: Prajakta Mali Pramod Kumar Asfa Siddiqui Vaibhav Garg

Vegetation-impervious surface-soil (V-I-S) fractions offer a continuous sub-pixel representation of urban surface heterogeneity. In this study, the influence of urban surface characteristics represented through V-I-S fractions on hydrological processes is analyzed at decadal intervals, i.e., 2000, 2010, 2020, and the projected year 2030 for the Mula–Mutha river catchment, Maharashtra, India. Pune city, as a major urban centre in this region, is experiencing significant changes in land surface characteristics over time, which have direct implications for its hydrology. The analysis uses the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) to model these changes and their effects on water resources. Results show that the urban area has increased from 14% (2000) to 25% (2020), with projections indicating a further rise to 34% (2030). Such transitions yielded an increase in surface runoff from 47% (2000) to 53% (2020) and projected to reach 54% (2030). Groundwater recharge has declined from 10% to 6% and is expected to fall to 4% by 2030. Model validation using discharge data at Mirawadi outlet yielded a coefficient of determination of 0.72 using land use/land cover (LULC) data and 0.79 for simulations based on runoff Curve Number (CN) derived from V-I-S fractions, indicating the improved model performance. This study presents a novel framework, which incorporates remote sensing-derived V-I-S fractions to assess the spatiotemporal impact of urban expansion on water balance components.

Urban Science doi: 10.3390/urbansci10070387

Authors: Lei Ning Yue Niu Yue Meng Yuan Li Qing Mo

Network development level and inequality level within urban agglomerations profoundly shape regional sustainability and global competitiveness. Existing studies predominantly focus on economic scale, geographic proximity, and static cross-sectional data analysis, often lacking systematic consideration of people’s wellbeing, network connectivity, and dynamic evolutionary processes. Furthermore, insufficient attention has been paid to the intrinsic connection between network development and inequality levels. Addressing this gap, this study systematically investigates the network development level, inequality level, and the correlation mechanisms between them, focusing on six national-level urban agglomerations located in China’s Yangtze River and Yellow River basins. Key findings include the following: (1) The overall connectivity efficiency of development networks within urban agglomerations continues to improve, yet the disparity in network status among node cities has gradually widened. The network centrality of core cities initially strengthens and then weakens. (2) Urban agglomerations with relatively lagging economic development often exhibit greater internal disparities in development momentum. Wealth distribution inequality within agglomerations has gradually eased, while the urban–rural development gap shows a trend of first increasing and then decreasing. Conversely, social welfare distribution inequality has intensified overall. (3) Network indicators centering on centrality significantly contribute to the imbalance in regional wealth distribution. As social welfare distribution inequality increases, the influence of network centrality characteristics on it strengthens. (4) The impact of regional network development level on inequality level is hierarchical and directional. Increasing network density, average distance, and degree of association helps mitigate wealth distribution imbalance, whereas increasing network density and centrality may exacerbate regional development inequality. Overall, this study provides empirical evidence and theoretical support for policy-making of sustainable development in urban agglomerations, and enriches the theoretical connotation of regional balanced development.

Urban Science doi: 10.3390/urbansci10070386

Authors: Hainan Wu Yaling Zhu Xiaomei Guo Dian Song

The crucial role of scientific and technological talent agglomeration in promoting urban green development is widely recognized, yet its mechanisms and contextual conditions remain insufficiently explored. Using panel data for 284 prefecture-level cities in China over the period 2004–2019, this study examines the impact of scientific and technological talent agglomeration on green total factor productivity. The results show that such agglomeration significantly enhances urban green total factor productivity. Factor mobility plays a mediating role, through which scientific and technological talent agglomeration improves the efficiency of resource allocation, thereby enhancing green total factor productivity. Furthermore, the digital economy strengthens the impact of scientific and technological talent agglomeration on green total factor productivity, and this moderating effect is more pronounced in cities with higher levels of digital development. This study enriches the literature on talent agglomeration by integrating perspectives on green development and the digital economy and provides empirical evidence to support high-quality urban green growth.

Urban Science doi: 10.3390/urbansci10070385

Authors: Felipe Teixeira Dias Ángel Rodríguez-Pallas Priscila Cembranel André Riani Costa Perinotto

This exploratory study examines the heterogeneous spatial evolution of cities in a fragmented non-metropolitan region of Southern Brazil and develops an original functional-symbolic typological framework that integrates functional performance and symbolic production in the classification of cities. Grounded in the theoretical contributions of Lefebvre, Santos, and Corrêa, the framework was designed by the authors to simultaneously incorporate economic, territorial, cultural, and identity-related dimensions that are typically analysed separately in conventional urban typologies. The research adopts a qualitative and inductive approach to analyse secondary data from municipalities in the state of Santa Catarina. Rather than treating urbanisation as a homogeneous process, the study conceptualises urban typologies as analytical devices capable of revealing differentiated urban trajectories, uneven capacities of territorial articulation, and distinct modes of governance in non-metropolitan contexts. The findings show that cities with similar demographic scales perform diverse social, cultural, and economic roles shaped by historically and symbolically produced spatial relations. Five urban typologies were identified: Multifunctional Metropolises, Industrial Regional Capitals, Agroindustrial Cities, Cultural Tourist Cities, and Local Centres of Basic Function. The results demonstrate that urban centrality in non-metropolitan regions is not determined solely by economic performance or demographic scale, but also by symbolic attributes such as cultural heritage, territorial identities, festivals, and religious functions. By integrating material and symbolic dimensions within a single analytical structure, the proposed framework advances the understanding of fragmented urban systems, contributes to contemporary debates on non-metropolitan urbanisation and territorial governance, and offers a transferable approach for the analysis of urban diversity beyond the Brazilian context. The findings also provide practical implications for regional planning and public policy by highlighting the role of symbolic production in shaping territorial organisation and regional influence.

Urban Science doi: 10.3390/urbansci10070382

Authors: Giorgia Tucci

Over the past fifty years, urban and rural spaces have been reshaped by global sustainability policies, digital innovation, and emerging socio-ecological needs. This article investigates the convergence of agro-urban planning strategies, Smart City infrastructures, and adaptive governance models, proposing an integrated agro-urban paradigm for sustainable territorial transformation. Drawing on a literature review and comparative analysis of international case studies—including Toronto, Milan, and Woven City—the research develops a triadic interpretative framework based on worldview, program, and faith. The study identifies AgroCities as systems centered on food sovereignty and ecological resilience, Smart Cities as efficiency-driven digital ecosystems, and Adaptive Cities as flexible, human-centered responses to complexity. Findings suggest that integrating food systems, technological innovation, and participatory governance enhances urban resilience and sustainability across scales. The article concludes by advocating for multi-scalar planning tools, cross-sectoral policies, and civic engagement to support the transition toward inclusive and regenerative cities. This framework offers a theoretical and operational contribution to reimagining urban planning in line with the principles of Smart Land and adaptive urbanism.

Urban Science doi: 10.3390/urbansci10070384

Authors: Inbal Bentsiony Ulrich Jacov Becker Yodan Rofé

Contemporary zoning-driven planning has been associated with traffic hazards, pollution and noise, loss of human scale and public space, socio-spatial separation, and rigid development patterns that impede incremental renewal. In response, the New Urbanism movement promotes traditional urbanism, with Form-Based Codes (FBCs) that regulate urban form and spatial structure, as a central tool. However, FBC practice remains concentrated in North America, and evidence from other contexts is limited. This study examines whether and how FBCs can be implemented within a hierarchical, centralized planning system. Using an exploratory case study approach, we analyzed an approved urban renewal plan for Ramat Verber in Petah Tikva, Israel. The study combines plan analysis, a conceptual FBC simulation, and expert consultations, with findings derived through an inductive analysis of implementation barriers. The FBC simulation showed that goals could be translated into more effective actionable provisions, whereas the statutory plan diluted objectives between vision and implementation. Identified barriers clustered into (1) legal and institutional constraints, (2) social and professional norms, and (3) management and coordination needs. We conclude that FBCs can be advanced without legislative change through municipal policy-level codes that standardize subsequent statutory local plans, supported by clear conversion protocols and existing urban renewal governance mechanisms.

Urban Science doi: 10.3390/urbansci10070381

Authors: Mario Ćosić Davor Sumpor Julijan Jurak Sandro Tokić

Older primary schools in Croatia are frequently located in densely built older settlement cores. Micro-locations surrounding school entrances are often not the result of prior urban or traffic planning; instead, they are retroactively managed through infrastructure and signalling interventions. Pupils participate in traffic as pedestrians, cyclists, e-scooter users, or passengers in cars, school buses, or public buses. The proposed integrated research approach includes: an online survey of pupils’ travel behaviour, systematic safety assessments of entrance micro-locations using the iRAP methodology, as well as field measurements and in-depth analysis of vehicle speeds, traffic flow and structure. For classes organised in two shifts, an online survey of parents (for classroom-based education) and pupils (for subject-based education) covered 56% of the pupil population. Because pupils’ travel mode is the factor most susceptible to influence through infrastructure improvements, statistical analysis was conducted using the χ2-test for the purpose of investigating relationships with the other three traffic-relevant determinants: school age group, pupils’ sex, and distance from school. Approximately three-quarters of pupils live less than 2 km from the typical school. If peak vehicle traffic does not coincide with the peak of pupil arrivals and departures during the overlap of two school shifts, part of the traffic on the school-access street may be unrelated to direct school-access activities. Vehicle-type restrictions and one-way traffic operation should be considered as measures to improve pupils’ safety. The proposed groups of measures for improving pupils’ safety include: (i) educational workshops for pupils, parents and teachers; (ii) reconstruction of school entrance micro-locations; (iii) targeted interventions in the traffic environment within a 2 km perimeter.

Urban Science doi: 10.3390/urbansci10070383

Authors: Siqing Chen

Sustainable urban transportation is fundamentally linked to public health outcomes, specifically the mitigation of fatal traffic risks under environmental stress. While stressors like adverse weather affect entire cities, traditional road safety models often assume uniform risk, thereby masking the spatial inequalities inherent in the urban fabric. This study addresses this gap by investigating the geographically heterogeneous impact of environmental stressors—including rainfall, surface moisture, and lighting conditions—on the conditional probability of fatal crash outcomes in Melbourne, Australia. Analyzing 43,075 severe crashes through a multi-stage geospatial framework (Getis-Ord Gi* and Geographically Weighted Logistic Regression), this research diagnoses how varying urban development patterns mediate the lethality of these stressors. The findings unmask a critical “threshold-crossing” pattern for wet surfaces, where risk transitions from protective to hazardous based on local infrastructure form and street geometry. Significant spatial inequalities are identified: high-density inner-urban cores and adjacent coastal corridors exhibit a heightened sensitivity to visibility failures and moisture, whereas newer industrial peripheries show stronger protective “risk compensation” effects. These results reveal a systemic mismatch between historical urban form and contemporary climate-driven public health risks. By identifying localized “lethality thresholds”, this study provides a robust evidence base for integrated planning and equitable resource allocation. It enables urban planners to move beyond generalized safety warnings toward targeted structural interventions, ensuring that sustainable transportation networks prioritize safety equity for all citizens regardless of their location within the urban environment.

Urban Science doi: 10.3390/urbansci10070380

Authors: Arvin Fernando Kate Francisco Marielet Guillermo

This article examines how Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) applied to public and shared urban transport contribute to sustainable urban mobility by synthesizing a decade of peer-reviewed research on intelligent, technology-driven public transport solutions. Using a PRISMA-based systematic literature search in Scopus for 2014–2024, followed by bibliometric analysis with VOSviewer version 1.6.21 and manual thematic content analysis of 186 selected studies, the review maps intellectual structures, implementation areas, and sustainability dimensions of ITS-enhanced public transport systems research. The results show that priority ITS applications in public transport implementation areas cluster around smart infrastructure and frameworks, AI- and data-driven mobility systems, smart public transportation, and IoT-enabled connected mobility, with a strong focus on real-time monitoring, predictive analytics, and adaptive operations. Sustainability analysis indicates that ITS applications in public transport primarily advances technology-driven sustainability, smart and sustainable urban mobility, environmental sustainability, and economic efficiency, while social sustainability and governance aspects—such as equity, accessibility, safety, and institutional capacity—are less consistently addressed. The review also highlights a highly interdisciplinary, yet thematically fragmented field with geographically concentrated evidence and limited longitudinal, real-world impact evaluations. Quantitatively, the review finds that over 90% of studies address technology-driven, smart urban mobility, environmental, or economic sustainability themes, whereas only 56.99% explicitly engage social sustainability dimensions. Overall, the study concludes that ITS applications in public transport already function as key enablers of more efficient, low-carbon, and intelligent transport systems, but calls for more integrated, context-sensitive, and human-centered frameworks that explicitly align ITS applications in public transport design, implementation, and evaluation with multidimensional sustainability goals and global sustainable mobility agendas.

Urban Science doi: 10.3390/urbansci10070379

Authors: Giuseppe Cappelli Sofia Nardoianni Mauro D’Apuzzo Vittorio Nicolosi

The implementation of Raised Pedestrian Crossings (RPCs) is one of the most common strategies used to reduce vehicle speeds in urban areas, thereby enhancing road safety levels. The understanding of driver speed profile variability is critical for designing effective traffic-calming policies (such as Zone 30) that account for the full range of driver responses. This study analyzed 19,840 discrete speed measurements collected from 2480 unique drivers at eight longitudinal points approaching and departing an RPC, located in the city of Cassino, Italy. The model takes into account two distinct directional approaches due to the different slopes that characterize the case study road segments that converge at the RPC. To overcome the statistical bias of simple OLS models, a Linear Mixed-Effects Model (LMEM) for each direction has been implemented. This hierarchical approach correctly models the nested data structure (measurements within drivers) and quantifies the variance related to individual driver behavior. Within this LMEM approach, the aim is to evaluate how drivers decelerate and accelerate before and after the RPC. This step is crucial because understanding vehicle and driver behavior on the RPC provides the basis for implementing effective speed reduction strategies, such as the 30 km/h Zone.

Urban Science doi: 10.3390/urbansci10070378

Authors: Amal Aldhamari Shikun Zhou

Smart city infrastructures increasingly depend on cloud platforms processing data from billions of IoT devices, managing critical urban services. With IoT connections reaching 1.3 billion globally and cloud attacks rising 75% year-over-year, security breaches threaten public safety. However, traditional AI threat detection systems operate as “black boxes,” preventing municipal stakeholders from understanding automated alerts. This paper presents an interpretable AI framework based on Model Context Protocol (MCP) that bridges automated threat detection with human-centered decision support. Using 1.9 million authentic AWS CloudTrail events, including a 1.3 million-event cryptocurrency mining campaign, we achieved 84.2% detection accuracy (96.8% on real attacks) while generating plain-language threat narratives suitable for diverse stakeholders. The Random Forest classifier with MCP layer provides real-time detection (<13 ms latency) and actionable intelligence (2.3 s explanation generation), meeting smart city operational requirements. SIEM integration enables immediate deployment in municipal Security Operations Centers. This production-ready framework demonstrates that interpretability and accuracy are complementary, not competing, objectives in smart city security.

Urban Science doi: 10.3390/urbansci10070377

Authors: Umberto Baresi Alessio Russo

Urban green infrastructure (GI) is widely promoted for cooling, stormwater regulation, biodiversity support, and human health benefits; however, these benefits remain unevenly distributed across communities with different socio-economic status. Machine learning (ML) is increasingly used in GI planning and design through high-resolution mapping and demand and exposure modelling, enabling planners and landscape architects to explore scenarios and assess alternative solutions based on the benefits generated. However, ML risks generating or perpetuating spatial injustice through biassed training, opaque optimisation priorities, and epistemic exclusion of Indigenous and local knowledge when models are not developed and applied transparently and collaboratively. This perspective discusses recent GI and ML trends and debates to: (i) clarify how ML can support equity-oriented GI planning; (ii) identify technical and socio-economic risks; and (iii) outline ethical and governance pathways supportive of legitimate and accountable GI planning. We argue that ML should be treated as a component of socio-technical governance rather than a neutral technical tool and therefore should be applied through collaborative design and periodic re-evaluations.

Urban Science doi: 10.3390/urbansci10070376

Authors: Ladislau Radermacher Andrei Burlacu Cristian Radeanu

Abandoned mine methane can remain active beneath post-mining cities long after mine closure, creating environmental and public-safety challenges when urban works reactivate subsurface gas-migration pathways. This study assesses methane hazard in Lupeni, Romania, where unexpected gas emissions were detected during commissioning tests for a new natural gas pipeline in August 2024. The analysis uses a monitoring database of 41 fixed points surveyed during three field campaigns (123 observations in total). Descriptive statistics showed a strongly right-skewed concentration field, with an overall mean of 5.65% vol., a median of 1% vol., and a maximum of 54% vol. Campaign-to-campaign correlations (Pearson r = 0.746–0.923) indicated short-term recurrence of hotspot behaviour over the monitored period. To translate these observations into decision-relevant risk information, a fully reproducible monitoring-driven probabilistic screening model was implemented. Consequence severity was mapped from measured methane concentration, while the probability component was derived from alert-threshold recurrence across the three campaigns using a Beta posterior and Monte Carlo resampling (50,000 iterations). The mean point-level risk was 6.97, indicating that the typical monitored location was not uniformly critical. However, a hotspot-envelope indicator defined as the 95th percentile of point-level risk across monitoring points had a mean of 19.40, and the model-derived probability that it exceeded the critical threshold of 17 was 97.6%. The findings suggest that the Lupeni hazard was localized but severe, supporting targeted monitoring, excavation control, and hotspot-focused intervention rather than generalized alarmism. More broadly, the workflow may provide a practical screening approach for other post-mining urban areas where repeated monitoring data are available but mechanistic subsurface characterization remains incomplete.

Urban Science doi: 10.3390/urbansci10070375

Authors: Pedro Esperanço Carolina Coelho Olímpia Sobral Verónica Oliveira António Luís Amaral Carla Rodrigues

The proliferation of daphnids in secondary clarifiers of urban wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) can compromise effluent quality and disrupt treatment stability. This study evaluated the effectiveness of sodium hypochlorite (NaOCl) for controlling daphnid populations and assessed its influence on dormant eggs hatching. A pilot-scale oxidation ditch activated sludge system was operated under conditions simulating a full-scale WWTP. Acute toxicity tests were performed in clarified water (CW) and mixed liquor (ML) using NaOCl concentrations between 0.76 and 5 mg L−1, with mortality monitored over 96 h and LC50 values determined. In CW, concentrations ≥ 3.125 mg L−1 caused 100% mortality within 24 h (24 h LC50 = 1.75 mg L−1). In ML, toxicity was significantly reduced (24 h LC50 = 7.43 mg L−1). Statistical analysis confirmed NaOCl concentration as the main driver of mortality, with additional contributions from operational parameters such as electrical conductivity, total dissolved solids, and dissolved oxygen. Hatching assays revealed that higher NaOCl concentrations and prior cold exposure (4 °C) increased ephippia hatching, reaching 40% under combined conditions. Although NaOCl effectively inhibits active organisms, it may stimulate dormant egg hatching, potentially sustaining populations. Optimized control strategies are therefore required to ensure effective and sustainable daphnid management in WWTPs.

Urban Science doi: 10.3390/urbansci10070374

Authors: Nadun Bulathge Shameen Jinadasa T. Suntharavadivel Benjamin Taylor Richard Koech

With rapid urbanization, the generation of municipal solid waste is growing, placing ever-increasing pressure on cities to close, remediate and repurpose landfill sites in environmentally sustainable and climate-adaptive ways. Traditional landfill final covers such as compacted clay and geosynthetic systems are intended to limit infiltration; yet their conceptual designs often fail in performance longevity due to effects such as desiccation, settlement, root intrusion, freeze–thaw cycling and extreme rainfall. Phytocapping, or evapotranspiration/store-and-release cover technology is the use of vegetated soil profiles to provide storage for percolating rainfall, return water to the atmosphere through evapotranspiration and support biologically mediated oxidation of methane. Phytocapping is a green-inclusive nature-based climate adaptation strategy for urban landfill closure. This study explores hydrological performance, methane mitigation, ecological co-benefits, economic feasibility, climate sensitivity, monitoring requirements and regulatory barriers linked to phytocapping systems. Field evidence is strongest in Australia and the United States, especially through ACAP- and A-ACAP-style programs, while evidence from humid tropical, monsoon, freeze–thaw and low-resource urban contexts is comparatively lacking. As reported in published studies, well-designed phytocaps can result in reduced percolation compared to traditional clay caps. Reported publications also mention considerable construction-cost savings, depending on site conditions and design assumptions. Methane-related outcomes vary by measurement method and site context, with studies reporting surface flux reductions, methane oxidation and landfill gas attenuation as distinct performance indicators. These advantages are counter-balanced by design uncertainties that vary from site to site, limited long-term monitoring data, climate transferability concerns, and regulatory systems still firmly anchored in prescriptive low-permeability barriers. This review proposes a policy-oriented analytical framework that bridges the gap between technical performance evidence, urban co-benefits, staged monitoring and performance-based landfill closure regulation. As such, phytocapping should be considered not as a general-purpose substitute for engineered covers, but as a climate-responsive nature-based solution that can complement urban waste servicing infrastructure, ecological restoration and adaptive governance of landfills when properly designed, monitored and regulated.

Urban Science doi: 10.3390/urbansci10070373

Authors: István Waltner Gábor Halupka Tibor Rácz Malek Abidli Csaba Bozán László Bozó Erika Michéli

While the effects of urbanization are widely studied, the effects of soil sealing, particularly in the case of Hungary, have only received limited attention in recent years. Our study aimed at understanding the underutilized capacity of urban soils at the national level. We have applied a 20 m resolution, spatially explicit daily water balance-based methodology to calculate the potential water dynamics for the top 75 cm of the soils currently covered by urban fabric in Hungary, for the time period of 1971–2024. We aimed to utilize primarily publicly available data and open-source software to support further use and development. Our results indicated that these (currently sealed) soil surfaces could allow between 0.14 and 0.29 km3 of water to infiltrate into the soil, equaling about 7% of the estimated annual water withdrawal in Hungary. The on-site evaporation from these surfaces would produce about 400 PJ of total cooling service annually, corresponding to an average of 145 MJ/m2. Our findings highlighted the water storage potential of soils in Hungary, particularly in urban areas, supporting the future application of nature-based solutions and blue-green infrastructure.